Malaysian Kampung Tales

2011-11-16T08:22:00.001+08:00

A Bit of a Rant

2011-10-02T12:08:00.000+08:00

Ok, granted, this is a bit of a rant, but as Popeye used to say - "I can stands so much but I can't stands no more". What, I hear you ask, has gotten mild mannered Yusuf, all in a tis (this time).

   My wife and I went to Tesco's, Kampar, this morning. That in itself would not be a problem, except that standards and values seem to be slipping in our one international store.

   No, what got me all riled up was the wall clearly marked - tidak halal (not halal).I had occasion to have words with the Tesco staff about that wall a few months ago, when they insisted on putting bottles and tins of food from Korea and other countries - clearly marked HALAL, in that section also clearly marked non halal. In response I got shoulders shrugged and those halal items remain on that wall marked tadak halal.

   I simmered down and just shook my head every time I subsequently visited Tesco at Kampar. Today I was incensed. My favourite British sauces HP and Lea and Perrins, along with Tabasco sauce are now all on that TIDAK HALAL wall. It really was a WTF moment, in fact that is exactly what I said - WHAT THE FUCK!!

As as my dear wife pulled me away, trying to prevent me from making a scene. I was boiling - just how dare Tesco take all the HP products - HP Sauce, HP BBQ Sauce and HP Fruity from their shelves, not to mention Lea and Perrins Worchester Sauce, Tabasco and Tabasco Hot - and label them to be not halal.

I'm sorry, not wishing to to offend anyone, but just what the hell do Tesco'a think they are playing at? That aside. I am also confused when in Minat - a small supermarket in Kampar, I see Bovril and Marmite relegated to the non Halal shelves, amidst whiskey and brandy.

Just when was it that the Taliban took over Malaysia?

Still Standing

2011-09-07T18:56:00.000+08:00

There are two distinct ways that you canreach that old Japanese munitions chimney in Kampong Tanjong Bankong.

You can travel the scenic route throughKampong Tualang Sekar. That will take you past my father-in-law’s kedai kopi,into the kampong, turning right – always turning right, skirting round woodenMalay houses - now sadly ageing and weather beaten, past chickens, cats and smallshops selling just the basics for the kampong. Alternatively you can dash leftat the Chinese school (Ying Sing) from Malim Nawar.

That second option leads you down a narrowroad, through the Chinese sector of Malim Nawar, past the house rearing rabbitswhich hop and nibble not realising their fate and, eventually, brings you tothat munitions chimney via a Dragon Fruit farm. If you’re lucky, really lucky,those weird red dragon fruit tendril cacti will be displaying their produce, ifnot then you have to content yourself with seeing the snake-like arms of the crucifiedplants themselves - looking every inch like some deadly carnivorous plants froma John Wyndham book.

According to ‘Kinta Valley’ by Khoo Salmaand Abdur Lubis (Perak Academy pubs), that Japanese ammunition factory wasbuilt in Kampong Tanjong Bankong in 1943. The factory was owned by NipponNitrogen Kaisa, and constructed with the intent to supply arms to the invadingJapanese forces.

Originally there were two large chimneys,sprouting from two kilns, with a small factory block nearby producing riflebullets, artillery shells, machine gun parts, marine engine parts, gunpowderand hand grenades, quite possibly for the Japanese 29th Army stationed inTaiping, Perak - to use against local, British and combined forces.

All that now remains of the kilns is one 18metre high chimney. The second chimney was torn down for the price of itsbricks. The factory has long since disappeared, leaving a bare concrete andbrick stub as the only reminder. Outside that one chimney you can still see a fewcarbide blocks, as a vague reminder of what had taken place there. Inside, ofwhat remains of one kiln, sits an old rusted bike – a memory of times whichhave slipped away. The only conservation taking place at the site seems to be thesheer physical difficulty of ripping the bricks from the remaining well-built Japanesechimney.

The small kampong of Tanjong Bankong hasgrown around, and encircles that erect chimney. A small mining-pool lake, oppositethe chimney, reflects the sunlight. Moorhens swim, kingfishers dart and singlestorey buildings, bushes, trees form the rest of the rural backdrop.

There are still a few residents, though notmany now, who remember the factory when it was whole. Few can tell what went onunder the Japanese ownership, or what the 400 workers knew of the work theywere doing. They understood only that the work was secret, and worth between fourand six Japanese military “Banana” dollars per day, which was just enough toget by on.

We have to remember those days are rapidly slippingout of memory and into (largely) un-recorded history. The Tanjong Bankongchimney may not be as large, as ornate or as awe inspiring as a Kellie’sCastle, or some ancient intricate natural cave complex, but it is worth saving,worth preserving, worth remembering as an indication of what occurred in thatslice of Perak’s and Malaysia’s history.

The area around Malim Nawar holds many suchtreasures – colonial buildings, authentic and picturesque kampongs, wetlandsreplete with alluring wildlife – otters the size of dogs, buffalo, wetlandbirds etc, and yet the whole area seems to be off many of the recognised‘tourist routes’.

Northern Writers September 3rd 2011

2011-08-26T08:24:00.000+08:00

Expate Magazine July 2011

2011-07-11T15:32:00.000+08:00

My Say about His Say

2011-07-03T18:19:00.000+08:00

images taken from Ipoh Echo Issue 123

To Mr Jerry Francis, the people of Ipoh and the people of Perak.

I have read, with some interest, Jerry Francis having his say in Ipoh Echo.

Having read Mr Francis’ ramblings for a while now, I am goaded, finally, to respond - to have my say about his having his say, and respond to Mr Francis’ latest lambast on Ipoh history and heritage.

In Ipoh Echo Issue 123 (July 1-15 2011) Mr Francis remarks that he had ‘..highlighted those “eyesores’ with an intention to draw the attention of the city council to get owners to do something.....’ That is all well and good Mr Francis, but need you preen and pride yourself when those same building are pulled down?

Need you grin, as you claim responsibility for yet another section of Ipoh’s heritage being destroyed, and to create what exactly – a car park!

Reading Ipoh Echo Issue 123 brings to mind Joni Mitchell singing ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ – ‘They paved paradise and put up a parking lot’. However, in this case, they – the shadowy and mysterious ‘they’ pulled down a heritage building to put up a car park – a car park!

Much more of this wanton destruction of Ipoh’s heritage, and there will be no reason to visit Ipoh. Why should tourists come, and too see what exactly? Mr Francis is so very much mistaken in his view – building can and should be renovated, restored to retain a flavour of Ipoh’s past, its heritage, bringing a much needed character to what will otherwise be a characterless city. There should be no cheer when heritage is lost, for once lost it is lost forever.

Ipoh’s heritage buildings are the very reason why Ipoh has been so popular with film crews over the years. Tear down those buildings and film crews will cease to come and, pretty soon, other tourists will cease to come.

Ipoh needs to preserve its past. What Ipoh does not need is yet another car park, nor more contemporary, Art Brut, concrete eyesore buildings marring the once picturesque city of Ipoh.

Mr Francis you are wrong – oh so very wrong in your views – we do need to preserve the ‘old’ least, one day, you too be declared an ‘eyesore’ and be torn down and a car park erected in your place. Mind you, on second thoughts....

Expat Magazine June 2011

2011-06-16T15:38:00.000+08:00

Expat Magazine May 2011

2011-05-11T16:35:00.000+08:00

Expat Magazine April 2011

2011-04-11T17:45:00.000+08:00

Senses of Malaysia March/April 2011

2011-03-21T16:47:00.000+08:00

Expat Magazine March 2011

2011-03-11T08:12:00.000+08:00

Expat magazine February 2011

2011-02-08T11:29:00.000+08:00

Expat Magazine January 2011

2011-01-16T08:11:00.000+08:00

Expat Magazine December 2010

2010-12-12T11:49:00.000+08:00

Selangor Times 10th December 2010

2010-12-10T17:38:00.000+08:00

Expat Magazine November 2010

2010-11-21T13:06:00.000+08:00

November/December Senses of Malaysia 2010

2010-11-21T12:58:00.000+08:00

A Sultan comes to Malim Nawar

2010-10-14T07:55:00.000+08:00

Busy men, brown bodies stripped to the waist in the equatorial heat, toiled to cut the grass, to plant the trees, to mend the roads to ready the arena for the foundation of a memory. They drudged and slogged, ridding the area of insect threat, keeping fauna at bay they strove to begin construction to fleetingly house a regent.

Sweat glistened, muscles rippled as labourer assisted labourer with metal poles and material to build a shelter to honour a Sultan, parched dry they wrestled on to complete the labour before the time was due. Hours, days, weeks utilised in the preparations, for a day which, to ask any visitor, disappeared all too swiftly.

Despite the intensive industry of long man hours, the hot hard labour and herculean efforts involved for those heroes of men, the whole appeared to be but a fleeting flash and, despite the effort - finished. Cars, visitors came and went, consumables consumed with gusto; from preparation to enjoyment and aftermath but the blink of the eye.

However, in time, there is a brief moment of reflection, after the full evening’s gaiety, when glad rubbing of shoulders and the hail fellow well met has ended. It is a time after the generous marvel of gifts has been given and the golden tributes of honest speeches have been made in honour of the current regent. It is then that bright fanfares of fireworks explode lustily into the dark of the night, cascading sparks like sudden fairies over watcher’s heads. Swift flashes and deafening cracks temporarily bring light to the kampong and the small people, the humble people, the people who in their own minute ways make all the magic happen.

The dazzling fireworks explode and crackle, whoosing fearlessly into the night, spraying sparkling stardust into the hearts of regular people. They stop, just for a millisecond, and then the hearts continue to beat. But it’s that millisecond, that brief moment in time which raises the people up and helps them understand what it may be like to be a Sultan, a regent, a leader of his people, cloaked in silver and gold, raised on a dais and honoured.

But for the kampong people the time is all too short, the moment flashes past and night returns to bid farewell to the feasting and the merry making, closes eyes on the all too brief moment when ruler and ruled shared an occasion under the marquee and were effectively one.

After the honorariums, the giving, the receiving. After the last car has glided out of the temporary car-park and the fireworks have lit the sky; after the last person slides from beneath the marquee, night reclaims her right to silence.

Through the night the glow of temporary yellow lighting, highlights the emptiness. Red plastic chairs sit, abandoned, alone, no longer fulfilling their destiny as receivers of the rakyat - the people who came to see and be part of an event they will remember long after the red plastic chairs are gone.

In the morning men will come and roll back the red and white tape, once more freeing the grass, roads, borders. Others, with their implements, will wrestle and dismantle tubular structures, carefully laying hollow pole next to hollow pole, piled waiting to be stashed onto lorries for the journey home. Still others will wrangle material, undressing majestic marquees of their now off-white and tarnished gold.

Daihatsu trucks will come, their green backs anxiously waiting to be filled with blue/green chairs, different from the red plastic chairs, but fulfilling a similar purpose. Utensils robed of their purpose become but empty vessels, longing to be once more filled, but later, much later in other towns in other places on other occasions.

Before the last pole falls, before the last scrap of material undresses the occasion, a slight wind brushes the marquee and aids flags of cloth wave farewell to the moment shared.

It is a poignant breeze, a God given hand to wave goodbye to a regent who, for a few moments, graced the small town of Malim Nawar and helped raise the hopes and aspirations of everyday people.

Before long, one wooden sided truck after another begins to transport fragments of that magical day away. Clunk, clunk now the only sounds where but a few short hours before modern day minstrels serenaded the regent, melodious voices sang in harmony and hearts along with them.

Cats, dogs, return to their play ground, tire tracks in sand are eventually all that remain of a day spent with the Sultan, a day slipped into recent history but forever present for some. Nature, wind, sun reclaims the temporary auditorium, transformed into a theatre of the mind, and hearts become freed from actuality with the bond of the present smiling with acute memories.

Expat Magazine October 2010

2010-10-14T07:31:00.000+08:00

September/October Senses of Malaysia 2010

2010-09-14T17:04:00.000+08:00

Expat Magazine September 2010

2010-09-06T12:45:00.000+08:00

Ipoh Echo issue 103

2010-08-16T08:15:00.000+08:00

Expat Magazine August 2010

2010-08-06T17:08:00.000+08:00

July/August Senses of Malaysia 2010 (2)

2010-07-20T17:09:00.001+08:00

July/August Senses of Malaysia 2010

2010-07-20T17:03:00.000+08:00

Expat Magazine July 2010

2010-07-03T14:50:00.000+08:00

Ipho Echo 100

2010-07-01T09:50:00.000+08:00

reprinted in Expat Magazine June 2010

2010-06-03T09:46:00.002+08:00

Expat Magazine June 2010

2010-06-02T12:23:00.002+08:00

Expat Magazine May 2010

2010-05-05T17:57:00.001+08:00

Ipoh Echo 1st May 2010 issues 96

2010-05-03T12:41:00.000+08:00

Expat Magazine April 2010

2010-04-11T07:58:00.000+08:00

Space Gambus Experiment Expat magazine April 2010

2010-04-04T11:00:00.001+08:00

Senses of Malaysia March/April

2010-03-23T17:07:00.000+08:00

Ipoh Echo Issue 93

2010-03-18T17:14:00.000+08:00

link here

Expat Magazine March 2010

2010-03-02T17:17:00.003+08:00

link here

Ipoh Echo 1st March 2010

2010-03-01T07:56:00.001+08:00

link here

Ipoh Echo 1st February 2010

2010-02-01T18:23:00.000+08:00

Expat Magazine February 2010 - The Line

2010-02-01T10:11:00.002+08:00

Expat Magazine January 2010

2009-12-31T06:30:00.001+08:00

Ipoh Echo 88 - Lethal Lessons Indeed

2009-12-24T07:31:00.002+08:00

Ipoh Echo 88 - Cinema in Paradiso?

2009-12-24T07:29:00.001+08:00

unfortunately this was printed with the wrong image, the image above is that of Kamal Sabran from a story regarding The Space Gambus Experiment.

Expat December 2009

2009-12-05T07:51:00.002+08:00

Ipoh Echo Dec 1st No 87

2009-12-01T09:52:00.004+08:00

Ipoh Echo No.85 Highjacking Heritage

2009-10-31T08:44:00.002+08:00

Expat Magazine November 2009

2009-10-30T11:22:00.003+08:00

Ipoh Echo No.84 Garbing the Gazebo

2009-10-16T16:51:00.002+08:00

Expat magazine October 2009

2009-10-08T10:46:00.000+08:00

Two Cat's Tails

2009-10-01T07:53:00.004+08:00

My dear wife comes from a long line of cat lovers – it is in the blood. Her father, the remarkable Pa Yusop, hordes cats, herds cats, loves cats, only parting from his beloved felines to travel.

It is then, when Pa Yusop is away from home and hearth that his dastardly sons, and one daring daughter, swoop to clear the compound of its incessant mewling, meowing, hissing and the collection of half-eaten cat biscuits.

On their father’s return, hearing his mild reprimands, his gentle tears on discovering his number of cats reduced from twenty - to a mere handful, is a small price his children have to pay, for their gathering of their father’s cat melee.

We too are no stranger to cats and, at times, have had up to four cats, but their numbers ultimately dwindle as friends and other relatives become attached to those adorable bundles of fluff, falling prey to their innocently mesmerising eyes and their cuddly charisma - instantly insisting on finding homes for the captivating cats.

So from four, we have become reduced to one. One scruffy, mangy, cowardly cat named because of his colour – kopi. Kopi is far from brave and spends most of his life running, or hiding from the local cat bullies, but he has, amidst the complexity of his day sauntering, resting and eating, found time to enamour himself with one female cat.

She is approximately Kopi’s colour – dark, muddy brown, but without his distinguishing white bib and goatee beard, and, is basically, a flirty brazen hussy of a cat.

The unlikely Romeo and Juliet cat romance lasted, and, over time, the female cat became pregnant. On delivery, there was no guessing as to who the father was, as each of the shabby kittens were dark and each had a white bib, of sorts, just like their dishevelled father.

One morning, the daylight just adjusting itself from the privacy of the night to the company of the day, I stood by the rear of the kitchen, about to give Kopi his fishy breakfast, when I heard a soft mew, mew, mew.

I looked around, and heard the sound again. I looked by the outside cupboard - nothing. I looked by the washing machine and heard the noise again - from the direction of the wild cherry tree. There, between the lower braches, in an old plastic sieve we use to feed birds rice, were two small kittens.

At first, I simply could not believe my eyes. Sitting, mewling in the old, dry sieve were two mini Kopis, abandoned and a little pathetic. A moment of panic struck me. What should I do with the kittens - should I take them down, and if I do take them down, what should I do with them. I froze with indecision.

Eventually, when my brain decided to work, I scooped the kittens from the tree and put them in a spare cage. Then I thought, what if the mother cat comes by, she would need to feed them, so I opened the cage door. As soon as I did so the kittens started to go out, so I closed the cage door and felt guilty about doing so.

I called my wife on the hand phone, and she said she would talk with the neighbours about this. Meanwhile, I proffered the kittens a small bowl of water and some tinned food; luckily, I had in the fridge.

I had no idea how the mewing kittens got into the tree, thinking, maybe, it was some cat thief who realising what he had taken on, had simply abandoned the young cats in the tree, knowing that we would look after them. I was a little annoyed at this presumption, but also a little pleased that people should know that we would care for those animals.

A few minutes after my caging the kittens, my wife called back. The neighbour was so pleased that we had the kittens, as she knew they would be safe with us. She had gone on to tell my wife, who later relayed to me, that it was the mother cat who was moving the kittens around, and this was the third time it had happened.

No doubt, eventually, the single mother cat had decided that their father should play a greater role in the rearing of their children, and deposited the kittens as near to him as it was possible.

Unfortunately, her faith in his paternal instincts was mistaken, as, on seeing his offspring, he raised his hackles, spat at his children as they, in turn, spat back at him, and that was that - the sole father/children contact.

Later that day, the neighbour’s young son arrived and took Kopi’s children away, back to his mother, and back to their mother.

Ipoh Echo No 82 - Sweets for my Sweet

2009-09-17T10:58:00.000+08:00

1st Story in Ipoh Echo September 2009

2009-09-08T09:08:00.000+08:00

Expat magazine September 2009

2009-09-06T08:21:00.001+08:00

Its all a Matter of Communication

2009-09-02T12:47:00.002+08:00

Wednesday, 2 September 2009
Its all a Matter of Communication

When I complained that my weekly articles were not appearing in The Malaysian Insider, as agreed. This is the response I received.

Dear Yusuf,

I have been regretfully assigned to advise you that it appears that
The Malaysian Insider is not the right fit for you. I am sorry you
feel that we have wasted your time when we do not publish your column
on Saturdays... as a news site, it is the call of the editors and
management as and when to use what articles they see fit for a certain
day.

Perhaps it is best that we part ways while everything is still
amicable. We would like to thank you for contributing and wish you all
the best in the future. All payments outstanding will be cleared as
soon as possible. We will be uploading your latest soon, as it is
about Merdeka.

Thank you and regards,

The Riverside Palaces of Kuala Kangsar

2009-08-23T10:09:00.003+08:00

Senses of Malaysia September 2009

Our House is a very, very Nice House

2009-08-23T09:51:00.003+08:00

As seen in Senses of Malaysia - September 2009

Our House is a very, very Nice House 2

2009-08-23T09:33:00.001+08:00

Expat Magazine August 2009

2009-08-04T08:05:00.000+08:00

Empire Strikes Back ExPat Magazine July 2009

2009-07-01T16:25:00.001+08:00

Expat Magazine June 2009

2009-06-07T18:03:00.000+08:00

The Empire Strikes Back

2009-05-05T09:42:00.003+08:00

Ninety nine times out of a hundred you can get away with eating ayam percik (1) from the pasar (2) and nothing will happen. It will be a nice snack amidst a pleasant rural atmosphere and life will continue pretty much as before, only a tad heavier.

However, there is one chance in a hundred that this will not happen, and the Empire, being somewhat disgruntled with its former imperial masters, will, well and truly, strike back.

I had eaten something at the night market (3), it may have been ayam percik, it could have been anything and that evening I was okay, just a slight discomfiture around my midriff but otherwise fine.

In the early morning I awoke sweating, which was strange as the air con was on full blast. I experienced some bizarre animal crawling around in my insides and rushed to the loo. Having spent a reasonable amount of time staring at my wash basin and encouraging said animal to exit through the appropriate outlet, I exited and life continued.

That was the day my Asia Rocsta was due in for a service, so we drove to the nearest town, left the Rocsta with the mechanic, and was about to drive off in my wife’s national car when the animal reasserted its influence on my stomach.

Being a man, I decided all would be fine until I got home, then I could rush to my place by the basin and read a magazine while nature was taking its rather inconvenient course - I was wrong.

I had driven just outside of town when the internal pain became so overwhelming that I blanked out. My wife had been talking to me, the traffic thankfully slow, and I passed into unconsciousness for a few seconds - it was long enough to put my foot on the accelerator and drive the car into a lamp-post.

My wife said it was an accident happening in slow motion, she was powerless to do anything. In hindsight she could have switched the engine off, but the whole situation was so surreal for her, that was the last thing on her mind.

I came to consciousness with a lamp-post growing out of the car’s bonnet and the animal racing around my insides. I was desperate. My wife half pulled, half encouraged me out from the behind the steering wheel and into the passenger seat.

Luckily the car was mobile and no other vehicles were involved, so my wife drove the few meters to a friend’s house and I was able to dash to their toilet, unfortunately for me the friends where Malay, and the toilet a squatting toilet.

Still, as they say – any port in a storm, and I had this tsunami raging in my gut threatening to engulf me again unless I evacuate. As it turned out, in my weak and distressed state, the squatting toilet was the perfect answer.

Without being indelicate, the cool, flat toilet porcelain soothed those parts which needed soothing and performed its function perfectly. It was a good few minutes, incidentally seeming like hours, before I was able to scramble upon numbed legs and thank our friends for the respite.

They looked at me as if I were a cat just in from the rain, dripping on their hall tiles - a little pitying and more than a little bewildered.

Throughout that day and well into the next, the tsunami alternated with the trapped animal making me rue the evening I decided to eat from the market - my English stomach still no match for the Empire’s revenge.

(1)spiced chicken

(2)market

(3)pasar malam

Of Tender Shoots and Gulai

2009-05-04T11:03:00.001+08:00

In between the wet dry season, the dry wet season, the dry, dry season and the wet, wet season we have attempted to grow all manner of plants and fruit trees at our questionably idyllic home in the Malaysian hinterland.

Aside from the more obvious difficulties of poor soil, open location, burning sun and torrential rain, we have daringly attempted to plant a ring of fruit trees around our property, in the vain hope that they would grow, and shade our sun-kissed bungalow.

Ha!

Having thoroughly trounced the compacted soil into near submission, beaten it until it was close to surrender, we filled the hard-won holes with black soil and chicken-drop pellets, gave them a comprehensive watering, planted fruit trees and stood back waiting for growth.

And to our great delight, grow the trees did. We watered our mango, rambutan and longan saplings daily, nursing them until they had taken hold and started to produce healthy looking leaves. We were so proud of our horticultural endeavours, envisioning cool shade and, in time, succulent fruits to replace those we haven’t collected from our orchard.

Then, one sun-filled, blue kingfisher darting morning, we went to water our brave strident saplings only to find them to be stripped bare, naked of foliage. All that was left were stark stalks, completely bare of fresh leaves.

The surrounding earth had been freshly trampled, and tell-tale hoof marks left in the softer sand. It didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes, or even an Inspector Singh to discover the culprits to be wandering water-buffalo, stealthily visiting during the night.

Forgetting what my brain was there for, and thinking this a one-off occasion, we tended the very same saplings, urging them to grow more shoots, and gradually, very obligingly they did. Joyfully we covered their roots with spent grass, lovingly nurtured them, and, once again, fresh tender leaves sprung forth from eternally hopeful plants.

One day, during what might have been summer, if Malaysia had such seasons, we left for the pasar(1) to buy fresh provisions.

Upon our return we stood aghast and agape - our lovely saplings had once again been stripped of their leaves, providing yet another snack for nomadic bubalus bubalis.

This was too much.

Off we shot to the local hardware store, purchasing copious amounts of ‘galvanised’ wire. That day, being bold and full of angry energy, we strung snaky springy wire around handily situated lamp posts, and congratulated ourselves on a job well done.

The seemingly endless, pastoral days rolled ever by. Rain and sun graced our house, garden, and our ‘galvanised’ wire, in plenitude.

We noticed the once grey wire slowly turn earthen colour, and thought no more about it, until, once again, we were faced with stems of fruit trees, and not only no fruit, but not one leaf in sight.

The hefty buffalo had plunged straight through rusting wire, which we found limp and cheerless on the bovine trampled ground, and once more feasted upon our obviously delicious, tender fruit shoots.

Not only had buffalo eaten the leaves from all the fruit trees, but had broken two of the larger trees, when using them as scratching posts.

Until the nice local council supplies us with a concreted culvert to border our property, we will be faced with this problem, so, for now, we are re-planting fruit trees within our garden fence, and surrender those outside to wandering water buffalo.

I must confess, that whenever I am consuming water-buffalo Gulai (2), prepared by my loving wife, I think of tender fruit-shoots, gnawed from my saplings, and give a sly inner grin.

(1) Market
(2) Malay curry

Yes, we have no Bananas

2009-05-04T11:00:00.001+08:00

Durians are, arguably, the king of fruits, smelly as hell and as tasty as heaven - unlike bananas which appear bland in comparison.

So there we were, new home, new environment, lots of new and exciting challenges already coming our way, you would think that we’d enough on our stoneware plates, but no, we had to have more.

Our wedge of land is big enough, big enough for a moderate sized house and a reasonable surrounding garden. Not large by anyone’s standards and I guess that’s why we were so easily persuaded to take over my brother-in-law’s orchard, after parting with a moderate token of ringgit.

In my early youth I was raised on an English apple farm. My mother worked as a house keeper for gentry and my father as a farm hand/tractor driver. I had acres of apple orchard to roam in, and even learned a little about apple tree upkeep, not enough to do it for real but enough to tease my vanity. So, somewhere in the depths of my deluded subconscious mind, I was equating English apple orchard with Malaysian fruit orchard.

At first sight the orchard was slightly overgrown. Overgrown by any other point of reckoning other than a seller’s of course, and we were persuaded that a modicum of exercise, a day or two’s work at the most, and the orchard would look like an orchard again, instead of a set for a Tarzan movie, monkeys included.

Of course the day or two’s work turned out to be a full week’s work by three labourers armed with machetes, scythes, motorised grass cutters and just about anything else they could lay their hands on to battle the vines, shoots, brush and sprawling vegetation which had started to reclaim the orchard.

The upside, well the upside was that we did indeed have a Malaysian fruit orchard. Eventually we discovered that we had a good number of kampung durian trees, a few mangos, rambutan, cempedak, and ciku trees, and yes, no bananas.

Having and tending are two very different concepts. We quickly realised that it was going to be impractical to hire help, to keep the undergrowth away, on a permanent basis. There was the cost factor to consider, plus the unreliability of said help. So, bravely, we decided, as a family, we would tend to the orchard ourselves, it couldn’t be too difficult, could it, or could it.

The four of us, my step-daughter, one of my step-sons, my wife and I drove to the orchard, parangs, saws and trenchers in hand. We were ready, willing and maybe not so able, or so it seemed after the first half hour when barely a meter had been cleared. Still we hacked and chopped on - glad it was the dry season so we didn’t have to cope with leeches as well as tangled undergrowth.

And clear we did, the be-wellingtoned, parang swinging, sweat drenching four of us - blisters, splinters, mosquito bites and all. For three days we laboured, under the mottled shadows of the fruit trees and bamboo, and on the fourth we rested. We looked upon the land, and it was good - then vowed, never again.

The orchard is returning to its former self, with tangled undergrowth, young saplings and copious amounts of green foliage covering our tracks. Fruits, such as they are, return to the monkeys, squirrels, wild boar and two legged visitors who brave the growing jungle to collect them.

One day, not today, I will do something about that orchard, one day, perhaps tomorrow or the day after, I’ll plant bananas.

An Englishman's Home is his Bungalow

2009-05-04T10:57:00.001+08:00

For twenty plus years I had longed to finally settle in equatorial Malaysia. There was this dream that I would move to an idyllic rural setting, build a comfortable home and spend whatever days I had left communing with nature and living the pastoral life.

Eventually I did - though perhaps not quite as I had imagined.

When the call of the wild finally came, I sought out a plot of land in a countryside setting, which just happened to be adjacent to my in-laws, and went to peruse. The land was an odd wedge shape, with compact sandy soil and obviously still used as a water buffalo highway.

My wife and I glanced across the sandy landscape, realising that on three sides there were views of green distant mountains - fading gently to light blue - it was a moment of heart-leaping beauty. In the mid-distance was a sparkling lake, locals call them mining pools, but to us this was an incredible lake replete with heron, stork, egrets and amazing blue flashing kingfishers.

How could we not fall in love there?

We stood at one end of the wedge and fantasised about building a gazebo, sitting and ogling the view, under an attap roof, while attending to cats, chickens, rabbits and an assortment of animals running and hopping through our imaginations.

Bargaining for the plot was not the hassle we had imagined it to be - the figure in my mind was so close to the figure the vendor required that we soon came to an arrangement and ambled off to a solicitor, to begin the purchasing process.

Eventually we made a small deposit on the land, shortly after paid the full sum and collected the weighty official paperwork - all was going swimmingly.

A renowned local builder was recommended. We set about discussing plans, for what we imagined to be our castle - or at the very least mansion, amidst the glorious natural splendour of rural Malaysia.

It was then that reality came a-knocking on our, yet to be built, wee small wooden door.

After a few sightings of local house design we decided that we wanted something a tad more creative, something that would emphasise the blend of East and West that we are as a family. We bought a few house-design software programmes and set about designing our perfect home.

Those few months spent working as a designer/planning assistant in my local Borough Council Planning Department really had paid off and now I was considering a second career as an architect. We took the land dimensions from the plot plan, and deftly adjusted rectangles to approximate a reasonable living space. With the computer software we built walls, created bathrooms, tiled kitchens, planted trees, and even built the attap dream gazebo. It was so easy, and so right for us that we were ecstatic.

Then our dreams and free flying aspirations came crashing down. Reality is not a piece of computer software. There are rules to follow, both natural and those enforceable by the State government. Houses had to face the street, yes even if there wasn’t an actual street to face. Buildings had to be set back from the perimeter ten feet. As if that wasn’t enough we had to negotiate the final costing to fall into our budget, so the two and a half storey house became a single storey bungalow, the play room and TV rooms both disappeared as did the second hall. What we were left with was different from what we intended, but ours nevertheless.

Four years on that house remains our family home.

A Sheer Joy and an Absolute disaster

2009-05-04T10:56:00.002+08:00

Settling into our new home was both a sheer joy and an absolute disaster.

It was a sheer joy to finally have our own land and home, instead of the house rentals we had been used to in Kuala Lumpur, and our temporary accommodation in the local rural town. Now we, at last, had some domicile to call our own and somewhere to, literally, hang my pretentious hat.

While going through the process it seemed like an absolute life time, but, in fact, we had done very well to have our house designed, land cleared and home erected in just a matter of a few months. It was especially impressive considering we had hired a Chinese contractor; a smiling, charming gentleman who spoke very good Hokkien, very little Malay and no English at all. So my, practically sainted, wife who has no Hokkien, very good Malay and English, attempted to translate for me, as I have minimal Malay, no Hokkien and hope to be understood universally in English.

With a mixture of rash, impromptu sign language, broken Malay and my wife’s, at times desperately frantic, translations we somehow got by, and despite the odd hiccup or thirty, communicated and compromised over everything.

Luckily I didn’t resort to the traditional English method of communication with non-English peoples - if in doubt shout, if still in doubt shout louder - but I came very, very close at times.

After the build was completed, we began with the mundane matters of moping and washing to clear the house of builders’ and carpenters’ dust, then set about the final act of this practically theatrical farce of removals.

Moving our belongings from Semi D, to terrace house and now to our brand new bungalow home, had taken its toll on both our patience and our furniture. There was the usual in and outing of furniture and belongings –

no that’s to be left behind, yes that is going, no that one over there, er no the blue one , not that blue one, that’s red, the other blue one.

- Then arriving to find out, with exasperating frustration, that the exact opposite had occurred.

The ‘well experienced’ and ‘extremely careful’ removal men had turned out to have grossly exaggerated their credentials - to our intense dismay. Our prized furniture, carefully selected from stores across Kuala Lumpur’s chic metropolis, experienced abrasive scrapes, rough bumps, wounding bruises and scratches of a most bizarre nature. To crown it all, only the marble top of one round Chinese table had survived – its wooden base was cruelly crushed out of all recognition, and lay in splinters in the back of the lorry. Our former computer table literally fell apart the moment it was lifted from the lorry. I gulped to stifle a sob, sighed and got on with it, remembering to renegotiate any hint of a tip, later.

As people say, it was a learning experience. And learn we did. Though to be absolutely honest it was entirely my own fault. Instead of hiring some internationally renowned removal company, replete with carefully constructed boxes designed for the purpose, individuals to monitor the move and vital lists to remind you what to do - I had made the, now infamous, decision to hire a ‘ lori sewa’ - lorry and crew, and hunt for my own boxes in supermarkets.

A heart crushingly vital lesson was learned. Hopefully we shall not be moving again anytime soon, having finally settled into our newly built home, but if we were to move home and hearth, kith and kin, I now know exactly what not to do.

I'm Beginning to See the light

2009-05-04T10:54:00.002+08:00

Life was all plain sailing. The warm equatorial night air remained firmly outside my cool air-conditioned room. Frantic mosquitoes banged their heads against windowpanes in frustration and even the disapproving cicaks had clocked off – taking their negativity with them.

Smugly I sat, revelling in the wondrously technological 21st century, comfortable in my castle, lights dimmed, Neo-Plasma air-con blasting and pseudo-sound surround DVD player playing season six of 24 through our not-quite-flat screen Sony television. At that moment, life was at its most perfect.

On the side table, within my easy grasp, lay a freshly unwrapped bar of chocolate, slightly in danger of being warmed by a mug of freshly-brewed Nescafe, both anxiously waiting to be consumed.

I confess – it wasn’t a rich life, not a sparkling, effervescent, jet-setting sort of life by any means, but, at that moment it suited. It was an old pair of jeans sort of life, a comfy pair of smelly trainers sort of life, the sort of life that fits you and only you — a life to be revelling in, when the time suits, of course.

And then, as they say, it all went disastrously wrong.

Without a shadow of a warning, my sorely-needed electricity went off.

One moment TV, lights, air-con; next moment dark and silence, save for some mocking amphibian chocking with laughter outside.

This was no mere inconvenience. I desperately need air-con. My entire being revolves around being cool. I need lights, warm showers, and mind-numbing television to stop me from thinking too much about ants, snakes and water buffaloes.

I need the comfort of access to the Internet, microwave ovens and all the electrical paraphernalia of a modest life.

Suddenly the plush modern world went quiet. Radios stopped, TVs stopped, and all the VCDs, DVDs, CDs and MP3s remained hushed, as if some godly figure had raised one finger to lips, but the world kept turning.

Grabbing the trusty torch, I pushed the button and the torch went on giving life-saving light — then off. I shook it — back on came a bland sort of yellow light.

The very sort of dimness that makes you fall over cheap plastic Japanese slippers – on your way to find candles.

Candles, just why would we want to hide candles? It seemed beyond me. What was my thought process when I buried candles at the very back of our cupboard?

Maybe at the time I was in deep denial that the electricity would ever fail again. But to bury them so deep, back beyond the boxes of old clothes, ancient photographs, bits and pieces of things we might need one day, but never do.

On the electricity went – then off.

There was no television, therefore no Astro satellite, no MP3 player, no Internet, no Facebook, no MySpace, no light until I finally discovered the hidden bag of night lights.

A fresh shift of house lizards gave their tut-tut verdict of my predicament; frogs found newly-inspired voices and insects competed for “Insect Idol of the Year’’.

A brand new world opened up its vistas. A world of nature and of flickering, romantic candles – a world of reading and writing, an excitingly fresh new world of literature and meaning — only it was too dim to read or write.

However, the minute the electricity eventually came back on, all was forgotten, as hero Jack Bauer once again saved the American day – and I was suckered back gawping at the contemporary world.

Careful with that, er Parang

2009-05-04T10:50:00.001+08:00

Thud.

Was that the shiny, sharpened, blade of Malaysia’s answer to Madam Guillotine falling on the innocently unprotected neck of this column? Surely not!

Thud

Was it a broken-nailed digit, poking the delete button in Adobe In-Design, erasing the words and sentiments of our beloved Going Ulu?

Thud

Was it the whir and whiz of a mechanical hit, engineering the cruel demise of these few column inches from a shiny new Goss Colorliner 80 printing press?

No?

Then hurray and hurrah, for then perhaps it was the duller chopping sound of a carefully swung parang, artfully wielded by sun-browned working men, clearing the dense jungle that has overtaken my fruit orchard.

Maybe it is the kampung hero Pak Uda and his tiga bujang lapok (three elderly bachelors), chopping and rending as they go, clearing the ever encroaching jungle from delectable durian and highly consumable ciku trees - the smell of their cheap cigarettes overpowering even the scent of cempedak, perfuming the still orchard air.

In the country it is a sad, but nevertheless necessary, task to clear swathes of orchard from binding greenery, that is if the orchard owner is to have greater access to tend his few growing fruit trees, and collect the bountiful fruit, before it is lost to jungle denizens, four-footed and two.

While metaphoric cities are concrete jungles, with skyscraper ‘trees’ grown to the sun, houses mere bushes ‘where no sun will shine’ - in the real jungle, trees are cities giving shelter to thousands of souls and bushes their houses, but crowded, needing the saving grace of light.

Careful with that parang Pak Uda, swing straight and true, fell only to increase light, and bring the welcome rays of the rural sun onto the blossoming buds, which will bring forth the fruit for the owner, the pasar and stall.

In previous durian seasons I have managed to salvage perhaps one, singular, spiky durian fruit, from a towering orchard of roughly thirty trees. I have been completely unable to sample the growing bunches of crimson rambutans, while other sumptuous soft fruits have simple vanished into thin air before my trusty dusty Rocsta has made a stop in my poorly tended orchard.

Pardon me, but I do feel a tad aggrieved that furry four-pawed primates, and the occasional two-legged be-wellington’d poacher should help themselves to more fruit than the fruit orchard owner is able to collect. Fair’s fair, and holding zero grudges here, but come on chaps fair or foul, do think to leave a fruit or two to the man who, occasionally, tends the trees, and prevents the encroaching jungle from swallowing the orchard up in its entirety.

Come fruit season I am left not only with a bare minimal amount of fruit, but a growing sense of paranoia.

In my heightened delusional state I start to stare at roadside fruit sellers, peering to see if I am able to recognise fruit from my trees – a lengthy cempedak here or a rounded kampung durian there, all suspiciously fresh and having that orchard feel to them. In famous foreign supermarkets I stalk the aisles suspicious of the less than perfect fruit, wary and wondering if these might hail from a small orchard now bereft of its produce.

So swing that parang Pak Uda, chop that sapling and remove that vine, clear the path to the trees that are mine, let me be the very one to grab the fruit and run, unless some devious others first are come.

Thud

Is that a durian I hear dropping in my orchard, stand clear, excuse me I have to dash...............

Ants in your Pants

2009-05-04T10:49:00.000+08:00

Sometimes, the mere thought of life in the countryside is a big stretch of the imagination for town dwellers.

Living, as we did five storeys high in a Kuala Lumpur hillside condominium, my family and I encountered few problems with insects. Barely one fly would drop in for a brief snack before being extinguished by a neatly rolled glossy magazine and wending its fly-like way to fly heaven.

Then we moved to the countryside where all manner of plentiful creeping, crawling, and flying insects abound.

In our garden, grasshoppers the size of locusts spring from half eaten leaf to succulent new leaf, happily having three course meals on our carefully, and painstakingly situated plants.

Huge green caterpillars, perhaps extras for some science fiction film, consume whole plants within but a few short hours.

Squadrons of vampire mosquitoes patrol the gardens — their clocking-in hours seemingly being just before dawn, and again at dusk.

The time constraints not deterring the female mosquitoes — ever more deadly than the male — from lurking in our cupboards, behind curtains or in wardrobes waiting expectantly to strike some nice warm body full of salty blood.

Their most favourite time being while we are sleeping, nibbling our ears, necks, leaving blood stains on our top sheets and pillow cases.

Yet worse, much worse than all these trifling annoying insects put together, are the ants.

Millions of ants — big ants, small ants, blacks ants, brown ants, red ants and white ants — all with but one aim in mind: to break in and burglarise our home, cause as much chaos as possible while eating our electrics, cleaning out our kitchen and making as much nuisance of themselves as is possible.

For the past week I have engaged in battle, and evacuated, persistent armies of ants from each of our five bedrooms and three bathrooms.

It has seemed a never ending nightmare. No sooner do I free one room from their skinny-legged grasp, than another room is under attack by lines of marching ants, emerging through the minute gaps in the aluminium widow frames and forming zigzag lines, or clusters, over our walls.

For three days running, I was occupied with skirmishes of ant lines in our main bathroom. They would pour through the window frame, I would discourage them with water, they came back and I attacked with rolled newspaper, or any other object/deterrent which came to hand.

They would return, I would attack, they would return again, and again I would once more attempt to disperse them.

The wonderful, and deadly, systemic ant powder, sold in little silver packets at our local pasar, used to dispense with whole nests of ants, but now, sadly, the ants, in their collective wisdom, no longer partake of these poisoned Trojan Horses, no longer carry them into their nests, but, instead, just stare at the laid powder with disdain, and march around it chuckling to themselves about man’s stupidity.

Boiling water is effective and kills — more or less — instantly, but it’s cumbersome and needs to be repeated frequently. So now I use the large (585ml) aerosols of water-based insect killer to dispense with these uninvited guests.

Meanwhile, cicak (geckos) gaze down from the ceiling, tut-tutting at my futile efforts, knowing that in the man versus ant battle, man is not going to win.

Penang - a Sheer Delight and.........

2009-05-04T10:45:00.002+08:00

Beaches have a magical, magnetic pull . . .

I was musing, sitting in my gazebo, sun streaking through the gaps in the attap, lulled by the gentle lowing of the water buffalo, and all my conscious mind could think about was — the beach. In truth it was not just any stretch of sand and foam, but THE beach — the illustrious, glorious beach at Batu Ferringhi, Pulau Pinang.

The mood was set. Arrangements made. No sooner was it said than done, my wife and I were motoring up the highway, past Ipoh, and heading for Penang bridge, and the seven ringgit toll.

Penang — a sheer delight and, coincidentally, the worse communication nightmare ever. Those leafy avenues, so cooling and shady during the equatorial day, mask vital road signs and obscure much-needed turnings by the lunar light.

I had spent a delicious day watching airborne tourists drift at the mercy of kaleidoscopic parachutes, small naked children squealing with joy at the teasing touch of chasing waves and prim and proper adults slowly melting their stiffness until they, like everyone else on the beach, chilled to the soothing rhythms of waves and the placating warmth of the sun.

Eased by the sight of humanity taking time out, my wandering thoughts had turned to Thomas Mann, Venice, Dirk Bogart, the nature of beauty and the music of Gustav Mahler — all playing within my heavy head’s very own Cinema Paradiso, to the steady harmonies of The Lovin’ Spoonfull singing Coconut Grove.

The Pearl of the Orient lived up to her name displaying the most vibrant of bright blue skies, and fluffy white clouds which were too laid-back to scud, instead inching towards their destination, happy to soak up the relaxing rays of the northern caressing sun.

Just out from the beach, under the roof of a mamak restaurant, I partook of simply the best udang and petai sambal I had ever tasted, eagerly it was consumed with an accompanying nasi lemak and washed down with the sweetest teh tarik. I was, at that moment, sublimely glad to be alive.

As the metaphorical lead curtain of night dropped with an almost audible “thunk” over the glistening and gleaming colonial dwellings, Penang transformed into a furtive, secretive mistress as she shyly revealed her multitude of pleasures — only to the most insisting and persistent lover.

I missed turnings, so obvious during the day, obscure at night, and sauntered away from my proposed destination, ending up in old Georgetown, itself a wondrous and enchanting place, but mystifying in the dark, lit only by street lamps and the reproachful headlights of fellow road users.

Alleyways masqueraded as roads, roads seemed to end halfway — turning into cul-de-sacs. I missed numerous signs only to discover, on back tracking, that the vital sign was only visible from one direction — not the one I had travelled in.

Helpful directional signs seemed to disappear after the first mention, leaving me to take wild, and frequently wrong, guesses as to where I should be headed. I was confused.

When my acute sense of direction and, perhaps not so, skilful map reading became delusionary, it was time for me to stop driving and take stock.

So take stock I did. The roads, which had so readily presented themselves in daylight, seemed to sneak around corners, peeking out, and waiting until I had passed, merrily re-presented themselves, laughing great belly laughs at my expense and bewilderment.

An hour later, I had completed my 10-minute drive back to my lodgings, somewhat frazzled and much in need of rest and recuperation.

SHHHHHHHHHH....I'm Thinking

2009-05-04T10:34:00.001+08:00

City dwellers often refer to the countryside as being quiet. What they mean is that there isn’t the daily thrum of traffic, the honking and the intrusive radios playing so loudly it’s cheaper to listen to your neighbours’ than turn on your own.

Before my family and I ventured to greener fields, we lived in numerous apartments in Kuala Lumpur. We lived over people, under people, beside people and adjacent to people in all kinds of situations, and yes, city people, drawn from all walks of life, can be noisy.

Even the simple act of dragging a granite grinding stone from one side of a kitchen to another, can create thunder to the apartment beneath, while a child’s simple knocking can grossly interfere with a neighbours’ avid concentration on their favourite Korean soap opera.

Yet these incidents occur as mere trifles when compared to our more recent experiences, in the countryside.
Two frogs doing what they do best.

For the first few days in our new country home, cats meowed, dogs barked and the wandering water buffalo emitted their own peculiar sounds — somewhere between a cow’s moo and an old man’s disgusted snort. These were expected sounds and none too intrusive to daily living, so everything was, seemingly, hunky dory.

Occasionally, it has to be admitted, the local kampung hall held a bit of a bash. It could be a wedding or a political reception, or a holiday celebration lasting until 1am — that is when 70s karaoke songs get sung earnestly, but badly, by some fellow desperately in need of throat lozenges, or an operation.

That was until it rained.

The rain was pleasant, cooling, refreshing, even calming to look at and listen to. It saved me having to water our extremely thirsty garden, so all was fine, until, that is, it rained at night.

Then out came the tenor and baritone frogs.

Please don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against frogs, they are God’s creatures, and, in their own place, lovely beings, but...

They croak. They croak the loudest, most deafening croaks I have ever heard from frogs, anywhere.

Last night it rained.

It rained a good, hearty, healthy rain, a melancholic, dreamy rain — a welcome rain, enough to drown our garden and flood the road — normal enough these days. But after the rain came the frogs.

The initial frog performer began a quiet, pathetic, buzzing-like croak — nothing too loud or offensive. But then the chaotic frog chorus erupted. I wouldn’t have minded so much if they actually had gone croak, as in katak, katak — the frog sound so frequently demonstrated in adverts and cartoons — but they didn’t.

Throughout the night there was a frog cacophony, sounding exactly like water buffalo continually jumping on toddler’s squeaky toys, in unison.Encouraged, their animal buddies joined in with the parping of old bicycle horns, squeezed randomly, while together they worked up to a climax which they sustained all night long.

It was louder than cats fighting outside, louder than the television, and much louder than my step-son snoring in the bedroom next door.

I thought it was some bizarre party by our ageing neighbours, or maybe a local ritual involving children’s toys and horns — but my wife told me it was frogs. I looked sceptically at her as if to say, “Are you sure?” She looked determinedly back as if to say “Who’s the Malay here?”

Morning came, the sky was clear blue and the mountains hazed in golden mist by the rising sun — once again I knew that we were blessed to be here, despite the frogs.

R&R with Bells On

2009-05-04T10:27:00.002+08:00

It was the usual sort of hot, bright, sunny day as I travelled the grey asphalt ribbon of the North-South Expressway.

I had done my time, served my sentence and had been let off for good behaviour from the sandy environs of my rural home. I was about to spend a few days luxuriating in the charismatic metropolis of Kuala Lumpur — as a visitor, this time, rather than a resident.

During my first night back in the city, the moon smiled a big smile at me, so in return, I smiled a big smile back — later, I learned that it was a peculiar conjunction of moon and planets which gave the appearance of the big smile in the heavens. Nevertheless, I took it at face value.

The first day I was as happy as a sand-boy to be back in KL, though I am not too sure what a sand-boy is, nor why one should be rated as being happy but . . .

I felt as I had on coming to Malaysia for the very first time, touching down in Penang airport, all hope and wide-eyed anticipation at this wildly new and exciting land.

No traffic near-misses, deluge of rain or belligerent taxi driver could dispel the feeling of awe and wonder on this particular trip.

My sense of marvel became even more heightened as it was the holiday season — children were home from studies and one festivity tumbled into another.

Awesome, gigantic Christmas trees had sprung up in malls across the city. These were carefully bedecked with countless toy soldiers, snowmen, red ribbons and copious amounts of festive bling.

Gingerbread-men, distinctly reminiscent of certain cartoons featuring ogres and donkeys, hung amidst the general mêlée of cotton-wool and polystyrene snow, which seemed to fit right in with the commercial season of good-enough will in this veritable wonderland of suspension of disbelief.

Subsumed by the overall feel of this jovial season, and becoming somewhat bemused by it, l sat in cafés and restaurants being beguiled by stories of cobra-fighting mongooses, Christmas-tree-light eating rabbits and politely shy monkeys who, seemingly, inhabit hills surrounding KL.
(Above) Shoppers gather around a Christmas tree outside a shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur.

I shook hands and hugged people who had been strangers but now were becoming friends, and generally immersed myself in the mad spirit of the year-end season.

Out on the streets, KL was its usual hot, dusty, charming self, amidst sultry blue skies and all its customary, equatorial brilliance.

One poignant difference was the greater number of children in evidence. Impatiently they tugged at doting parents’ loving and somewhat harassed hands — having not yet entered that period of disenchantment with time-off from studies, which generally comes with lengthy school holidays.

Studiously avoiding the tanning rays of the ever present sun, I traversed the city environs largely by going underground. There, my steely hands firmly holding precious books garnered from second-hand bookshops and the finest book emporiums that KL had to offer, I gazed at the full gamut of Malaysia’s multiculturalism travelling on the LRT.

I listened one moment to Arabic, the next to German, Tamil, Malay, Hokkien, Swahili, and, through it all, savoured the immense diversity of mankind in the microcosm of the city train. I enthusiastically and wantonly enjoyed my visit. But visit it was.

As with all respites, there comes a time when the partying draws to an end and it is time to return. Then I was feeling equally excited about returning to my rural home, seeing my one remaining cat, and inspecting the damage done by winds, rain and carelessly wandering water buffalo to my still struggling saplings and plants.

Another World

2009-05-04T10:12:00.002+08:00

One bright, hazy, sunny day, a little over two and half years ago, I dragged my family kicking and screaming into the rural splendour of Perak, and away from the malls, freeways, LRTs and KTMs that are continuously, vibrantly, buzzing in Kuala Lumpur.

The idea, no doubt born out of some bizarre mid-life crisis, was to co-exist with nature in the sublime magnificence of the Malaysian countryside, eschewing all those technological marvels which add so much pressure to everyday life in the city, leaving us all pressured slaves to modern technology.

So of course we brought our hand phones along with us, just to keep in contact with the friends we had made in KL, and our laptop computers, because we need to work to earn money, and the Astro account because the kids need access to English speaking programmes and of course the streamyx broadband connection to the internet - as we still have family and friends abroad and need to keep in contact with them and my various publishers.

Before the house we designed was completed, we rented a small four bedroom house in a new part of an old tin mining town, famous for its Chicken biscuits, which incidentally contain no chicken, and for being founded by Indonesians escaping persecution in Java. Later in the town’s history, during the Second World War, there was a tremendous battle between the Japanese invading forces and the British defenders, which is still remembered by a battle ridge just outside the town.

Settling into the temporary house really was a half way stop for us. We had many of the comforts of a small town – restaurants to eat in, cyber cafes for those who needed them, hair dressers, stationary shops and a plethora of smaller sundry shops to buy the odd loaf of bread or plastic bag of local milk. The town market (pasar) proved to be good for just about all our food needs, from fresh fish, beef, chicken and lamb to all the vegetables that were available in KL, and more - cheaper.

The down side was that we were still in a town with the Mat Rempit boy racers shooting their bikes down the long straight roads, at midnight, most nights, in attempts to become rebels without a clue, and succeeding. The only obvious signs of rural life were the huge fresh cow pats which mysteriously appeared in the road just outside our main gate, and the wondrous mountains which seemed to airbrush their misty mountain tops every morning just for us.

Those days waiting for the house to be built were both agonising and, in themselves, quite magical - agonising because it was difficult to watch the slow progress, the rain stoppages and the holidays which seemed to come out of nowhere. Difficult too to imagine the house ever being completed, and the four of us, plus one rabbit and two cats, finding in there a home for us all, but nevertheless we soldiered on.
Magical because time not spend working, or paying impromptu visits to watch the growth of the house, were spent exploring the area. In many ways this was one of the huge benefits of that wait - to be able to spend time roaming the countryside in our newly purchased ancient Asia Rocsta 4x4 jeep – and there was a lot of countryside to discover too.

From the back of the new town is a new tarmac road which was obviously built with some hope and intent. It projects itself from the heart of the new town, passes schools and a myriad of housing projects, past the newly constructed university, transverses a railway line, and bridges one of the many mining pools and stops, dead. From a handsome tarmac road it dwindles to nothing but a 4x4 dirt track amidst heaps of discarded rubble and household waste, used mainly by fish farmers wishing to access their fish crammed mining pools and the odd motorcyclist taking a short cut.
One adventurous day we decided to drive off the end of that road, curious to see where it led and if it were possible to actually get somewhere along it. After some minutes of ruts, rubble, deep puddles and bone jerking, the dirt track widened out and became a reasonable track, still bestrewn with pot holes, but quite manageable.

The dirt track took us from that dead end road, through many mining pools, alongside the river and eventually out to the rear of the next town. It was a ride we shall never forget. At last we were witnessing the real rural Malaysia, the place I had imagined but up until that moment had never seen. A newer, greener world opened up to us a nature which was quite bursting with opulence.

Bright blue kingfishers swooped around us and down to the river, storks and heron waited in trees or stalked the mining pools eyeing for lunch, tiny bee-eater birds nuzzled thunbergia flowers as they draped from trees and bushes along the way. Huge otters swam or played along the dirt track, making us halt the Rocsta and just marvel at them, and at the place we had come to.

For us that dirt track, stretching between towns, became a haven. We went there many times and just marvelled at it all, still not quite believing in its existence - the blue of the vast mining pools echoing the blue of the sky, the coolness of the shade from the trees as we passed under their branches and the gentle peacefulness of that place. Even the occasional herd of tan coloured cows brought a harmony quite beyond any expectations we might have had of rural Malaysia.

We still visit that dirt track. Over time we have discovered many, many more dirt tracks squeezed between all varieties of mining pool, which are left over from the days of tin mining in the area. Many mining pools are beautiful lakes which teem with fish, some are small shrimp farms, many others seem just to exist while around them land has been made over to small-holds growing many varieties of fruits and vegetables, from Chinese green leafed vegetables to small enclosures of stunted lime trees and banana orchards.

Eventually our house was completed, the electricity installed, water connected and the telephone line brought streamyx to my studio/office. In the two years since we moved in we have tried, desperately, to develop a garden amidst the compacted sand we inherited, but the growing is slow. Inside our compound we are just, now, making headway with the coconut and mango trees, while papaya trees seem to have little difficulty, but outside the compound is another matter.

While the lemon grass bushes grow with little assistance from us, nurturing the mango and longan trees seems an up-hill battle all the way, why? - Because of the constant roaming of the infamous herds of water buffalo. We have tried many techniques to avoid having our sapling trees munched by these quite magnificent, but annoying, beasts, from wire strung between poles, to a broken bricks area to discourage their wanderings onto our cultivated land, but nothing avails, nature prevails.

So here we live, learning to make compromises with nature in our somewhat idyllic setting. Every day we see the transformation of the mountains opposite, turning from grey to light blue then bursting into the sunlight all green and imposing. Every day we catch the sparkles as the sun glints on the mining pool opposite and awake to bird songs at once so exotic and beautiful.

Living in rural Malaysia we frequently we find that perceived disasters turn out to be god sends, like the floods from frequent rains which cover the roads and make walking and driving difficult, but brings out the fish from the mining pool across the way from us, so that we too can net fish along with our neighbours, and the local boys can jump into the ditches, filled with water, laugh and play in the innocent way that only children can.

Dreamer

2008-07-04T07:45:00.001+08:00

Every morning, on his way to release his cows from their nightly captivity Bhagat Singh delivers a small plastic bag of milk to Pa Yusop - a tradition which the Singh family have carried out every since Pa assisted grandpa (Daddyji) Singh with rent money way back just after the war - a member of the Singh family has delivered this customary gift every morning, ever since. In return Pa Yusop offers a freshly brewed glass of teh tarik which is never refused.

Bhagat Singh wears his name with pride, proud to be associated both with the famous Indian freedom fighter and with the lavish Bollywood film made about him, but that is where the similarities end. Bhagat is not bold and brave and does not show any proclivity towards freedom fighting, he is a slight, and some might say a little fragile young man who despite taking his taking his mother’s hearty curries, countless glasses of milk and simply heavenly capatis still has not put on the traditional weight of a ‘Punjabi’.

Bhagat, like many of his ancestors, is a cow-herd; he has been a cow-herd ever since leaving school at seventeen and following his father and his father’s father as cow-herds, minding a medium size herd of golden cows which the family have accrued over the past few years. Like his father Bhagat lets the cows out to grass in the morning and encourages them home before dusk, the hours in-between Bhagat spends attending to milk - distributing it to various restaurants in the area, and one corner shop.

It is a simple and not necessarily unpleasant life which had been handed down to the boy. At odd times Bhagat fantasises about becoming a great jazz and Carnatic saxophone player like Kadri Gopalnath, taking part in huge concerts in the city, making CDs and even appearing in a white tuxedo on the cover of his first DVD. The only problems being that a) he doesn’t have a saxophone, and b) he couldn’t play the saxophone if he did have one, so his illustrious career is to be cut short due to these not insufficient reasons.

The honest truth was that Bhagat is somewhat of a dreamer and spends more time dreaming, wondering and fantasising than doing, which is why his occupation uniquely suited him, it allows Bhagat space to dream and the time to dream in. Bhagat dreams of singing and dancing around the kampung just like in one of those lavish and stunningly beautiful Bollywood films.

In his head Bhagat would be dancing with Aishwarya Rai, he would be her husband Abhishek Bachchan only he would dance like Hrithik Roshan because Abhishek can only dance stiffly like father Amitabh. Nevertheless Bhagat, in his guise as Abhishek, and Aishwarya would make a beautiful couple as they dance over cow pats, through mud and down the kampung g lanes not noticing their chappals becoming smeared and stained by cow dung, while accompanied by the sweet melodies of the music director/maestro A.R.Rahman.

Miming might be a problem though, he would have to mime to the playback singers, opening and closing his mouth just right so that it would appear that the songs came from his own throat, still with all the camera trickery, he thought, they could do something about that, a back shot or two perhaps.

And amidst his dreaming there it was. Bhagat wiped his eyes to make sure that he wasn’t still in his own fantasy world, opening and closing them a few times but it was still there. Just down the lane Bhagat saw what he imagined was a film crew. Men were erecting huge standing lights, there were silver reflectors everywhere and tracks were being laid for cameras to roll along. Bhagat was seriously beginning to doubt his own sanity when he heard the shouting too, just like on a film set, it was quite unmistakeable and unless he was having auditory hallucinations too this was real.

A man, dressed maybe a little smarter than the rest, called over to Bhagat who resisted the temptation to turn and run, but instead walked slowly up to the man, mesmerised by all he could see and hear. He was the director of a low budget film, he explained, and was looking for extras; he couldn’t pay much, he said, but could offer the chance to be in his film. The word “Yes” jumped out of Bhagat’s mouth before even the director could finish talking.

“There, just there, there I am, look, ok freeze the frame, no like this.” And with that Bhagat took the remote control from his brother and pressed the rewind button long enough to find the right scene. “There I am, just at the back, behind that other fellow, you can see my leg, there ah that’s better now you can see me.” “Is that it”, says Bhagat’s unimpressed brother “Is that all you are in, one scene and half of that is behind someone else.” But what his brother could not understand, could never understand was he had been in a film, and actual film, not some imaginary fantasy, but a real live film. His dreams had come true.

Guerrilla

2008-07-03T07:10:00.001+08:00

There used to be seasons in the country, approximately two wet seasons sandwiching a hot season, now there are no seasons and the heat rises to unprecedented levels before, finally, the rains come to cool everything down, sometimes only for one day, then it is back to fierce heat crisping the ground and drying the laska leaves.

For the past week the sun has set new records, and if it were not for Yusuf’s diligent watering there would be no plants left in the garden at all, thankfully the heliconia remains fairly lush as are the papaya trees which have planted themselves betwixt them, one is actually bearing small green papaya and a number of flowers.

Birds have come to the garden to bathe in the sandy dust and to feed upon the various small fruits and berries, one other visitor has taken up domicile too. Call it the guerrilla. This small bundle of fighting fur hides amongst the heliconia. In the morning, as Yusuf opens the cage door to let his two cats out for their fishy breakfast, as fast as lightning the guerrilla swoops down upon the cats’ breakfast plate and attacks the fish before the cats can. Yusuf comes out of his kitchen and chases it away, the cats begin to eat, he turns his back and the guerrilla is there again.

This time Yusuf chases the animal away past the rabbit hutches and around the corner of the house then it has gone, disappeared. In the time it takes Yusuf to look around the garden and come back to the cats’ breakfast it’s there again pushing in front of the other two cats, and they are letting it as if they are afraid of this small creature. Once more Yusuf chases it off but this time he sees it duck down into one of the water pipes leading from the house into the open drain. Yusuf gets a broom handle and slides it into the pipe and whoosh the small furry guerrilla comes rushing out at him, and Yusuf takes a step back, not afraid only startled.

Again the chase around the house and the guerrilla dives amongst the heliconia once more. Feeling a little tired of this charade Yusuf goes and gets a bucket of water – one of the plastic paint buckets left over after the painters had finished when the house was built, they still come in handy. Yusuf fills said bucket with water and approaches the heliconia, then heaves the bucket and throws the water onto the heliconias, this does two things, waters the heliconias and scares this little Rambo. The guerrilla runs out of the compound just as Yusuf had planned, but one cat is chasing it this time.

The cat chases the guerrilla out through the fence, around the wedge-end of the garden, up past the mango saplings, past the stunted coconuts trees past the longan sapling, past the metal gate and into the neighbour’s small orchard. Yusuf breathes a huge sigh of relief, it’s gone, finally.

But having now run into the neighbour’s orchard, this little furry beast follows the fence line to the end of Pak Cik’s orchard, finds a hole big enough and squeezes back through into Yusuf’s garden and makes for the cats’ breakfast plate. And so the game is a foot.

Once more round the garden, covering the entire expanse of house from the back door past the end door, round to the front door, to the side door and back to the cats’ plate. Again Yusuf chases it off but this time it runs at Yusuf as if on a suicide mission - once more into the valley of death, between his legs and out so Yusuf once more gives chase.

As Yusuf rounds the house, ducking under the white thunbergia so as not to cover himself in ants, he is just in time to see this diminutive animal climb up into the underside of his car. Short of actually starting the engine and scaring the poor creature to death Yusuf is at a loss as to how to evict this unwanted tenant, he sighs and admits defeat for the day, but doesn’t mind as he can start all over again on the morrow just as he has been trying to evict this stray kitten for the past week.

Peeping Tom

2008-07-02T07:57:00.001+08:00

The kampung is a close knit community and news often spreads from one end of the kampung to the other quicker than a wildfire, there is, after all, no news more interesting than someone else’s news, especially that which has a little flavour of scandal.

All kinds of stories abound, some pleasant some not so pleasant, some harmless others harmful, it depends upon the teller, the told and the motivation behind the telling. A few moments ago, in his comfy corner shop emporium, Pa Yusop was regaling his audience with a well told tale about a peeping tom. Pa gathered his audience around him, ensured they all had their beverages and proceeded to enwrap them in the telling of his tale, stopping every now and then for dramatic effect, to catch his breath or take another sip of the milk-less sultan brand rose tea he was drinking.

The tale went something like this.......

Some years ago, when his girls were mostly teenaged, though in truth the eldest was then twenty, the kampung was an altogether different shape, the lanes were much narrower and there were many more trees then than there are today. Many of the old fruits trees remain however and many many more coconut trees abound, but they are in different areas now.

Then people lived in the same kind of wooden pyramidal houses that they had lived in for generations, with triangular shaped roofs which gave then their name. These simple wooden houses were mostly on wooden or concrete stilts and in later years people stored their bicycles, motorcycles, hammocks and even cars beneath the houses, treating them like an open garages. As time went by these spaces were filled to form extra rooms, but this story occurred before that happened.

During the day young energetic children would weave in and out of the house stilts chasing each other, chasing chickens or the kampung cats edging after morsels of fish, while women would grind chillies, pound lemon grass, exchanging news. Men would be found lounging in those long hammocks strung between the stilts.

There were few cars in the kampung at this time, the main means of transport were small motorcycles and children could run around the kampung without fear. Over time, and no doubt with the effects of heat and weathering knots fell out from the houses’ wooden floors, small cracks opened up as the wood dried out and, when caught at the right angle, you could see right through the floor boards to the ground beneath.
A night you could see from the ground up into the kampung house.

One year, for a few months, there were many incidences when people, especially women, were to report unusual sounds beneath their houses at night, sounds like heavy breathing and the shuffling of feet, and, upon investigating, hear what they thought were footsteps running away. Some people felt these to be supernatural beings, while others had a very good idea what these were, and they were not supernatural.
These incidents lasted for well over a three month period then suddenly stopped, never to be repeated.

It was one evening, about sundown, when Pa Yusop’s girls were performing their ablutions in the outside makeshift shower, the eldest daughter had washed herself, soaped, cleaned her reasonably long black hair and was humming away in the fashion young women have when they are happy to feel the cooling water flow over them after a hot day, she grabbed out for her towel. Upon wiping her eyes with the rough towel she thought she saw a figure in the coconut tree opposite the shower. She rubbed her eyes again and could clearly see Mohamad Faisal perched in the coconut tree, trying to look over the top of the shower cubicle.

It was Mohamad Faisal there was no mistake, the girl knew him as a regular customer at her father’s shop and also knew him to be a recently married man. A frightened Mohamad Faisal saw the girl looking at him and put a hasty finger to his lips. “Please don’t tell your father, he will beat me” The girl said nothing, made no promises as the man quickly climbed down the tree, adjusted his clothing and ran off.
The girl was shaken, but when asked what was wrong only said that she had heard something while showering which frightened her, she never mentioned about Mohamad Faisal, saving him, she thought, from a certain beating.

What the girl did not know was that Pa Yusop did hear about this a few days later, from someone else who had seen Mohamad Faisal in the tree, and the direction he was looking in. This someone also told a few of the kampung men who then paid a visit to Mohamad Faisal and invited him out for a walk. Some of them even visited Mohamad Faisal in hospital later, asking after the bruises he had suffered and the arm which had broken, they were most concerned about him and his well being.

There were no more reports about peeping toms. Mohamad Faisal found a job in the nearby town and decided to move his family there. Pa Yusop, in his telling, neglected to name Mohamad Faisal believing that the incident had been closed many years before.

Moyang

2008-07-01T06:50:00.001+08:00

Moyang (great grandmother) was always happy to see her grand children and great grand children.

Now that she lived alone in her elderly wooden kampung house she didn’t get to see many people, save for the next door neighbour who would call for her from her doorway inviting Moyang in for a glass of air bandang, and/or a gossip. Alternatively Moyang would briefly talk with the rubber tapper she now paid to collect the latex she was too weary to gather from her few rubber trees.

Often she would sit at home and remember when her grandchildren were small and visited from the other end of the kampung, now they come in cars from the city bringing their children with them and telling her of all the changes there were in the world outside the kampung. Moyang always listens to their tales, half in awe and half in trepidation at the way the world seems to be changing so quickly - has it always changed so fast she would ask herself, is she getting old and noticing the speed of change for the first time, these were questions that slipped quite unbidden into her mind at these times.

When her eldest granddaughter arrived from the city and asked Moyang to come visit with her she was a little taken-a-back and didn’t quite know how to respond, her granddaughter took her hesitation as agreement and whisked Moyang off to the city for a few days. In all her years Moyang had never once visited the city. She had gone to the local town many times and even out of the state on more than one occasion in her eighty years of life, but had never ventured to the city. Moyang had no need for the city, no concept of the city, no television or radio to bring the city to her. Her life was much as it had always been, except that now she was alone after her husband died and she was finding herself slower and getting more tired with age.

Moyang always adopted a positive outlook to her life it was this attitude which had seen her through the years of the Japanese invasion of her home, then the pseudo-civil war that pitched neighbour against neighbour and all the other changes that had altered her country. Throughout all Moyang kept her positive outlook and tried to keep an open mind to change, even though, at times, it was a struggle.

With ever widening eyes Moyang travelled along the highway with her granddaughter asking why is the highway so empty, why are the cars travelling so fast, where are the shops and where are the kampungs and one thousand and one other questions asked with the innocence of a child. At the rest-stop Moyang was a little disappointed at the quality of the food, and especially upset over the teh tarik which she always considered the benchmark of quality for any restaurant, but overjoyed at the huge toilet facilities and surau (prayer room), Alice was truly in wonderland.

In the city Moyang grew quiet. Like a baby with freshly opened eyes she looked bright-eyed about her, gazing at this and gawping at that, her face set in a seemingly permanent mask of amazement, with only the blinking of her eyelashes revealing motion and emotion, she appeared aghast, awestruck with it all.

The following day Moyang’s granddaughter invited her for some gentle jogging in the lushly green park, more of an excuse to take her grandmother to the park rather than to perform any serious exercise. Tentatively Moyang agreed and then set to worrying. What would she wear, should she stop off to buy some suitable shoes, who was going to be there, could she remember how to, all these questions assailed her throughout the day until she was on the brink of declining her granddaughters generous offer.

When they arrived in the park Moyang seemed a little puzzled, so her granddaughter asked what was wrong. “Where are they” she said “Where are who Moyang” “All the other people” “People Moyang, oh they are in the Malls and shopping centres and of course many are working today” “Working, oh I see then they will come along later” with this her granddaughter was a little puzzled herself. “Never mind we can start now if you like” “I’m not sure I remember how, will it be Inang, Ronggeng, Zapin or Makyong, and where is the music” “Music Moyang” “Yes we came here to dance didn’t we, you can’t dance without music can you” Moyang said in her soft voice “Dance, oh Moyang we came here to jog”.

Moyang looked at her granddaughter, “Jog is this what you are calling joget (dance) now, how funny that you young people shorten everything” “Oh dear, I am sorry, no Moyang its not joget it’s jogging – it’s like running but slower, exercise.” They laughed together grandmother and granddaughter united in their misunderstanding and the love they have for each other and Moyang was much relieved that she needn’t embarrass herself by dancing in the park after all.

Melvyn and the Magic Mushrooms

2008-06-30T06:42:00.001+08:00

Melvyn had been practising as a kampung bomoh now for many years and had learned a great deal in his time. He had learned that it was wise to ask for your fee before starting to effect a cure, just in case, he also learned that to refuse credit often insulted and he was the one mostly getting insulted until, that is, the aggressor remembered that it was in fact a bomoh they were arguing with and it was better to pay and remain a whole person than perhaps be turned into a frog. What people didn’t know was that really Melvyn was an old softy and rarely turned people into frogs, rats maybe, earthworms certainly, but rarely frogs.

During those many fruitful and one might say quite enchanted years Melvyn had taken to studying all forms of plant and animal life to help him with lotions, potions, poultices and cures, while coming face to bulbous stem with many odd forms of flora. The human legged mandrake root which screams when taken from the ground was quite scary, the raffelesia arnoldii which smells like rotting meat and has flowers up to one meter across is no doubt odd, while the large black Amorphosphalus is a rather large flower which is shaped in such a fashion to make married women swoon, and even unmarried girls blush and take photographs.

So it was with more than a little disbelief that Melvyn came to hear about the magic mushrooms of Cave Mountain. Pak Mat Saman rides all over the kampung on his three-wheeled motorcycle combination buying and selling various articles, including smelly beans (Petai), and so comes in contact with people from every corner of the kampung, and the outlying areas. It was Pak Mat Saman who first mentioned to Melvyn about the magic mushrooms, having heard about them from a hermit who lives on a small goat farm, by one of the caves at the base of Cave Mountain.

Pak Mat Saman, not being as cynical and sceptical as Melvyn, accepted the hermit at his word and felt that Melvyn might be interested. The hermit was quick to point out that these were not the magic mushrooms that other people raved about, the ones that some people put in tea which gave you hallucinations at the best and a severe stomach disorder at the worse, no, he emphasised, these were real magic mushrooms.

Melvyn scoffed at Pak Mat Saman, saying there was no such things as mushrooms being magical, he for one should know, being a bomoh for so long, and never hearing about magic mushrooms other than those in Western fairy stories or tales of old hippies. But it did pique Melvyn’s curiosity and he vowed that he would speak with the old goat man, just to dispel this myth before it took root in the kampung mythos.
The very next day Melvyn left his surgery in the very good hands of his dear wife Aisah and, borrowing a Honda 50cc from one of the many people who owed him a favour, if not their life, started out for Cave Mountain, just behind Pregnant Lady Mountain, but with a tricky little mud path to navigate. Riding past herds of wandering domesticated water buffalo, past small and large mining pools positively jumping with otters, trees with countless weaver-birds’ nests and along the pitcher plant bushes Melvyn eventually came to the area where he could see the goat shed, and realised he must be at his destination.

Melvyn shouted out a customary “Oooi, Oooi, lammikum” when a heap of old clothes and matted hair shouted back “You don’t have to shout, I’m not deaf”, “Sorry didn’t see you there in the bush. “Bush what do you mean bush, I was sitting down minding my own business” “Mmm strange name for a goat” muttered Melvyn under his breath. “Oi I heard that” said the disgruntled old goat herd man. “Now we’ve dispensed with the repartee can I introduce myself as Melvyn the bomoh” “I don’t know, can you.” And so the conversation continued until Melvyn suggested a little payment in kind for information and, after some initial haggling, a fairish price was agreed on, fair to Melvyn that is.

The old goat herder gave directions and off Melvyn went on foot, leaving the motorcycle in the care of the goat herder. Not long after, Melvyn skirted a small mining pool pond and came across a small glade, under the trees could seen good size mushrooms. They didn’t appear to be anything out of the ordinary, just slightly larger than normal off-white edible mushrooms, and Melvyn whispered an almost silent “Thought so”, as he reached to pick one. It disappeared. Melvyn tried another. It too disappeared. Then another and no sooner did his hand almost touch the mushroom than it disappeared, reappearing under another tree. “Good grief” said Melvyn in a voice which obviously thought this an entirely appropriate thing to say given the circumstances.

The rest of that day Melvyn spent trying to sneak up on unwary mushrooms, but, like rabbits, shot away before he could capture them. As it was getting towards dusk Melvyn stood, hands on hips and said “Right” to no-one in particular, “We shall see about this” and walked off to collect the motorcycle.

The Falling

2008-06-29T12:34:00.000+08:00

When her husband of fifteen years left leaving the two children she was devastated, her world imploded - securities were no longer secure, certainties no longer certain and the future just ceased to exist.

Suddenly it felt as though the whole world was yanked out from under her feet, she toppled and fell not knowing which way was up. She fell away from the city, from her previous home, the marvellous gardens, the bamboo and coconut waterfall falling through the gaps in sanity through the days and weeks of sobbing and self blame to land eventually back home in the kampung, where loving, nurturing arms where there to catch her.

Rearranging the children’s lives was as painful to her as the forced rearrangement of her own. The children were to give up friends and neighbourhoods they had come to love, not to mention the now estranged father who was both hero and villain to them, causing their minds to turn somersaults of emotion each time they talked on their hand phones, or met somewhere away from the place they now were forced to live.
Dragging herself up from the despair that always lay just at the edge of her reason she had no choice but to carry on for the children’s sake. There was money to be found, and as it wasn’t forthcoming from the children’s father that meant finding a job, any job that would bring in enough for rent and all the usual bills of day to day living.

Looking for work after a fifteen year hiatus was difficult enough, but finding the right kind of employment outside of the city was going to be a nightmare, and so it turned out to be. Day after day, week after week the only jobs that came her way were small time jobs in underpaid opportunities. However the time came when even the most unsuitable employment would seem a Godsend as it brought money in so she, and her children, could at least survive, not even properly thrive.

And that was the level to which she and her children had fallen – survival, pure and simple. There were no worries about choice for they were freed from the consumerist ambivalence of choice. It was a forced abstinence for both her and the children, but harder on the children as they had little experience of life at this level, and the journey they unwittingly embarked upon was firstly not of their making but secondly was way beyond their imaginings.

Their time was no longer spent weighing this product against that product, observing which had the better colour, which the right size, shape, feel for these things no longer had any meaning to the impoverished lives they were now leading. Choice came with the ability for its creation through the economical means to support it, without the financial means choice evaporated, and so their chains were released.

Moving to a smaller, rented, property was heartbreaking enough but needs must when the devil drives, and they at least had each other, a roof over their heads, and their kampung family for support. Slowly they created a new life, a different life, a simpler life, but never forgot the old city life, the Malls and consumer playgrounds.

From her small cubicle in the college where she taught the mother would access the internet and surf for newer, better job opportunities, time after time she would re- write her resume and spend agonising days waiting for replies which seldom came, until the day she was called for interview in the city.

It was a time of great excitement for all the family, a time of hope and renewed self belief, a time when she could start the process of rebuilding her belittled self esteem. From out of the closet she extracted the clothes she had been saving for interviews, dusted them off, ironed those needing ironing and cleaning those needing cleaning, and stood, clothed in her renewed self belief in front of the mirror, marvelling at the weight she had lost and how these clothes changed not only her outward appearance but also how she saw into herself.

The day came, the interview went well and two weeks later was called for a second interview. At the second interview the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) declined to give her the assistant manager post she had applied for and was interviewed for, but instead offered her the post of manager with a significant hike in salary for the post she had gone after.

The words excitement, bliss and elation are too small to express the feelings she experienced, nor what this opportunity would mean to her and her children’s lives.
From having fallen she began to experience the feeling of arising, emerging back into life out of existence but forever grateful of the humbling experiences she and the children had gone through.

Problems of the Heart

2008-06-28T11:44:00.002+08:00

We are what we are and Senada, a pretty and affable girl, had always been a little large for her age. This essentially was not her fault, she was blessed with a larger than average body and had a mother who, in her infinite wisdom, forbade her daughter from leaving the house except to go to school or out with her parents.

Mak Yang and Pak Yang had two daughters Senada and Safinaz. Senada was 17 while Safinaz, who closely resembled Lilo from the Disney film Lilo and Stitch, had just started primary school at the age of 7. The two daughters could not have been more different. Senada was quiet and almost totally obedient to her mother, or as obedient as any seventeen year old can be, whereas Safinaz, though young and small, was cheeky, assertive and the more mischievous of the two girls.

Mak Yang was an old school mother who was easily prone to the dual stresses of married life and parenting, but tried her very best to cope with the two young girls by adopting a sergeant-major approach to her parenting, ordering her children to do this or telling them to do that. The constant and impending threat of the rotan cane hung like a metaphorical sword of Damocles over the children’s head’s and within their mother’s easy grasp in the kitchen. Most times Mak Yang would only have to pretend to reach up for the cane for arguments, and or tempers, to quell without actual recourse to that devilish instrument.

Every heat filled day Senada would cycle home from school, change from her school uniform, do her homework, and then sit meekly before the TV until it was bedtime. At weekends too Senada would spend as long as she were able sitting in front of the comforting TV set her mother had prescribed as an antidote to life, from an early age.

Ever since the quietly intelligent Senada was able to walk and talk her mother had placed her in front of the television, using that dubious entertainment box as an hypnotic babysitter, and now Senada was 17 the television remained her babysitter, guru, overseer, guard and at times confidant.

Mak Yang had only the very best of intentions, wholly believing if her daughter was in front of the TV she was not out with friends smoking, drinking, drug taking or seeing boys, and now that Senada was 17, and biologically a woman, her mother was more worried about boys and the repercussions of those friendships, than other temptations.

The net result, of course, was that Senada encountered little exercise and less socialising other than cycling to and from school, the scheduled exercise at school and the friendships she formed there. The net result of inactivity was that Senada grew larger and struggled to keep her weight down while also becoming more insular. Nibbling sweetmeats while consuming tele-visual pap became a pastime and comforter, yet Mak Yang didn’t consider Senada’s bodily passivity a problem until the day the girl fainted at school.

A woody headed and somewhat confused Senada visited the school nurse who in turn referred Senada to the clinic doctor.

The young Indian clinic doctor put Senada on her scales and pronounced clinical obesity (overweight) and practically ordered Senada to slim and to bring her weight down to ‘normal’ levels but before that could happen Senada collapsed again, this time at home, and another clinic doctor referred her to the local hospital.

Doctors at the local hospital diagnosed Senada not with clinical obesity but with a stress induced seizure and cardiomegaly - an enlargement of the heart.

Senada and her parents were devastated to learn that it was an almost untreatable condition but might be helped with lower intake of salt, periods of rest and time out from all stress. Under strict doctors orders Senada was to rest at home for a few weeks before resuming school. She was to avoid the physical stress of cycling to and from school and only to take gentle exercise at home. Mak Yang was cautioned about allowing her daughter too much stress at home, so arguments and unnecessary upsets were to be avoided at all costs.

While the heart condition limited Senada’s life in many more ways, in some ways she gained her freedom and slowly managed to become more assertive at home, especially when freed from her mother’s caring yet seemingly tyrannical regime Senada grew in other ways too.

The Stench

2008-06-27T07:02:00.000+08:00

A truly abominable stench filled the entire single storey house.

It was the most appalling type of stench which seems to cling to every fibre of your being and somehow insinuates itself onto the very hairs of your nostrils, so even when not faced with the stench it nevertheless clings to your nose, and no amount of blowing of noses or washing will dislodge that awful smell, now seemingly part of your persona for all time.

That bad odour was everywhere, so it was difficult to pinpoint its actual origin; it just existed like something out of a most pungent nightmare. Pa Yusop thought the cause might be Melvyn the bomoh, he never did trust bomohs especially ones with silly exotic sounding names. Pa was all for going to Melvyn’s surgery and have it out with him, when Nawar commented that it was after six in the evening and he would home somewhere on Pregnant Lady Mountain.

Pa knew the ways of these bomohs and shaman, and the heavens above can help you when you cross one because they do things like, well like make your house stink, that’s what they do, that’s what gives them their reputation thought Pa - shamelessly disliking anything to do with magic and other worldly beings.

If I have to put up with this stench all night, tomorrow I shall be there having a few extremely unpleasant words with En Melvyn, ranted Pa internally. It really was too much, thought Pa, now what have I done against him for Melvyn to behave this way, true I stopped giving him free tea and coffee but I do have a living to make and these drinks cost me money, surely he wasn’t that petty. But there again, though Pa, perhaps he was, after all bomohs were known to be petty and mean minded, and would take vengeance if given a chance.

Pa just could not rest. Part of it was the unholy smell but more than that it was the idea of Melvyn placing a stink curse on his house, Pa felt hard done by, insulted even that one of his customers should do something as petty as this over such a small thing. It really wasn’t a nice thing to do to someone, thought Pa.

The stink seemed to worsen, if that were possible. It had a character of its own, a density – body that one could almost feel, so pungent was the odour that it had crept into every nook and cranny, every crevice in the building, into the fibres of clothes and right up Pa’s nose.

The stench was so bad that Pa and Nawar had difficulty now remembering a time when it wasn’t present; it seemed to last an age and to have been there since the beginning of eternity and no doubt would remain until its end. Nawar said he thought it was worse near the bathroom, but he couldn’t be sure. So both Pa and Nawar, hands over mouths and nostrils, inched their way towards the bathroom and flung the grey plastic door open.

The full ferocity of the stink assailed them both almost knocking them off their feet. It was like a wall of stink hitting them both full in the face with all the strength of a prize fighter. The smell was so bad, so powerful that even the younger Nawar made noises as if to vomit, but held back as he really didn’t want to open his mouth and inhale any of that putrid odour. Neither could see a cause. The bathroom was clean, well as clean as it had ever been and yet there the stench was worse, it didn’t make sense.

Going outside for a few gulps of relatively fresh air Nawar suggested that they both think about this awful stink, and suppose just for one minute that Melvyn did not put a curse, what could it be. What had any of them done in that bathroom to create such an awful stink, other than the usual bathroom and toilety things? It couldn’t have been his mother’s cooking, though Nawar, none of them have owned up to tummy problems and besides they live close enough together to know when that happens. What on earth could it be?

Hawa, Nawar’s mother, Pa Yusop’s wife said that she had only done what she always does, cleans the bathroom once a day and sometimes pouring a little hot water down the floor hole to keep away the germs and insects. Just then Nawar experienced a thought, being braver than he actually looked he ventured back into the stench ridden bathroom and hoisted up the white plastic sink-hole protector, practically vomiting when he saw a par-boiled frog, all blackened and beginning to rot inside the hole, blocking the water exit pipe. Courageously Nawar reached for a set of barbeque tongs and extracted the offending frog from its tomb and flung it as far away from the house as was possible.

Silently Pa apologised to Melvyn the bomoh and asked forgiveness for thinking ill of him, but still kept his cynicism regarding magic and shamans even if this time they were innocent – but next time?

A Taxi Drive Away

2008-06-26T07:12:00.002+08:00

There are at the very least two forms for the word ‘interesting’.

The first is when someone says “Mmm that’s interesting” , knowing full well it’s anything but interesting and in fact, propping two matchsticks to keep terminally bored eyes open, is probably quite the opposite. The second is “interesting” actually meaning that it, whatever it is, is of interest not only to me but to that guy over there, yes and him and most probably half the street too - lets go and ask them. Najib’s life was very much the latter kind of ‘interesting’ especially when seen from the outside looking in.

Najib is nephew to the corner shop emporium’s, and all round bon vivant, Pa Yusop, on his wife’s side, and in Najib’s early years was, like so many young men, unable to settle at anything concrete. He happily drifted through the first thirty years of his life blown by the winds of chance to consider this and probably not to consider that, smoking, fishing, chasing girls and generally trying to have as much fun as he could cram into twenty-four hours - if the twenty four were not enough he would borrow some from the next day, as a neighbour might borrow sugar.

Living alone meant Najib could take his own sweet time washing his clothes, doing the dishes, cleaning the house and tidying the small garden, or not - mostly not. Ash trays tended to end up like small Indonesian volcanic mountains spilling ash onto floors where the mess simply didn’t notice, while waste bins overflowed with waste which could be organic or inorganic, but was so old that it was almost impossible to tell one from the other, except, maybe for the maggots. The net result was a chaotically wasted life.

Drifting from job to job to joblessness the years began to catch up on Najib’s bachelor lifestyle, and after some mean and lean years Najib pretty soon found himself longing for companionship, love, affection, a maid, a cook, a house keeper and spectacular bed companion - all those he thought were to be found in one single woman, in marriage.

Eventually, after eyeing up as many likely candidates as he could muster, Najib found a suitable girl whose curriculum vitae seemed to match his martial requirements, so the couple whisked off to the blue and white mosque and were married. Najib was happily married as it turns out for a number of years, in fact the delirious happiness of being married made Najib wonder if perhaps he had two wives he might be twice as happy. With that thought in mind Najib launched into a campaign to capture and captivate the most suitable second wife a man could have, and, eventually through trial and error, mostly error, Najib met the woman who was to become wife number two.

It was mostly due to Najib’s eager and affable character that he actually got away with the whole second wife thing, especially as he had neglected to inform wife number one that she was in fact wife number one, of two. Juggling wives like a circus act juggles clubs Najib’s wives one and two lived separately and tolerated the arrangement as long as they didn’t actually have to meet, again this must be accredited to the congenial, and self deprecating way Najib handled the whole affair. A smile here and a cuddle there, a little reassurance and a lot of little presents calmed the potentially stormy wifely waters.

About this time Najib had become a taxi driver. He had borrowed cash to start his meagre business and soon was making enough money to pay back the loan and to keep his growing family in a reasonable style of living. Najib remained happy with both his wives, as, in his mind, they complimented each other superbly - what one lacked the other made up for in abundance, and so it was a surprise even to Najib when he met the woman who was to become wife number three.

Like all collections they start with humble beginnings, a sample here, a sample there, then another to make the set and another, and another until what had appeared to be a random series of actions have become the machinations of a single minded collector.

If two is a couple and three is a crowd, the addition of a fourth to the ‘happy’ marriage would see the bonhomie at breaking point, so Najib kept it quiet. Wife number three understood her place and went along with Najib’s deceit, not mentioning to a soul that she was in fact the third in a trio of concurrent marriages to Najib.

To this very day Najib continues with his marital juggling act, trying not to drop anyone lest it cause injury and upset, especially to himself - wives number one and number two are blissfully unaware of wife number three waiting with her enigmatic smile, just an evening’s taxi drive away.

Djinn and Tonic

2008-06-25T06:59:00.002+08:00

Mrs Melvyn the bomoh (aka Nur Aisah) was only now discovering just what she had let herself in for when she married Melvyn. As well as being a full-time housewife at their domicile somewhere on Pregnant Lady Mountain, Aisah was also expected to perform secretarial duties for Melvyn at his surgery in the kampung.

In the normal course of events that would have been fine, but there was nothing normal about Melvyn’s surgery or some of the beings that frequented it. Aisah was in the process of learning how to say “good morning how may I help you” while simultaneously repressing a scream and/or vomit, not to mention the sudden desperate need to go to the loo. She had yet to get round to the “Have a nice day” Melvyn insisted she say to all his customers, for to say it she had to mean it.

It didn’t help that even the scariest of creatures were always very pleasant to her, in fact in some ways it made it much worse. There was something inherently bizarre, and not to say quite frightening, in bogey men, large, green, hairy and scary enough to strip the paint of a Proton Saga, simply saying “selamat pagi” in the pleasantest voice it could rustle from its growl scarred voice box, then salaaming her in the most respectful way. For the eight hours of every day Aisah stayed in the surgery she constantly felt that, at least internally, her whitening hair was perpetually standing on end and her eyes staring as if on a constant diet of 100% pure caffeine.

Unfortunately for Aisah Melvyn spent half his working day doing his rounds, meaning that she was effectively alone in the surgery. Effectively in the sense that no other member of staff was with her at those times, but that was not to say that she was alone, on the contrary, Melvyn had asked one or two of his minor spirits to keep her company, and even though she couldn’t see them most of the time she could feel their presence as a cat could smell another’s spray. It was a lot to get used to, but she wore her marriage with pride, and experienced a little buzz of electricity when someone referred to her as Mrs Melvyn the bomoh.

“Er, Mrs Melvyn the bomoh”, Aisah’s mind was far away so she gave a little jump when the tall handsome gentleman with a rather dashing little goatee beard, spoke her name. This time Aisah had no problem with her greetings and was almost overwhelmed with relief to see someone (thing) normal, it took her by surprise. There was an odd smell of sulphur and smoke in the room, but Aisah put that down to bonfires outside and didn’t notice the small curls of practically invisible smoke which rose from her visitor.

Ali introduced himself in an accent which Aisah just could not trace, except, she thought, it was most probably Middle Eastern, as most accents she couldn’t recognise turned out to be Middle Eastern it seemed a fair assumption, wrong but fair. Ali asked after Melvyn and seemed sadder when he was told Melvyn was on his rounds, then asked if Melvyn had put anything aside for him. Aisah looked and found a brown bottle with the label ‘Tonic’. “There’s nothing much here she said, only a brown bottle which says ‘Tonic for djinns’, so it doesn’t look like he left anything for you.” “Ah” said Ali “That’ll be it then”. Aisha looked at Ali again, this time with wide open eyes and did see the curls of practically invisible smoke which were now a little less invisible then they had been.

“It’s not all laugh-a-minute being a djinn” Ali said, and no, thought Aisah, I don’t suppose it is, quite the opposite, outwardly she said “ah, er, ga” not being able to get past the concept of djinn in her fragile mind. “Some days the tricks and the petty nastiness’s just wear you down and that’s when I visit your husband Mrs Melvyn, for the pick-me-up, tonic, it soon energises the old fire and brimstone and puts me back on my feet, as it were.” “Ah” says Aisah. “Are you alright Mrs Melvyn” said the concerned Ali “Is there something I can get you, water perhaps?” “No, no it’s alright” she said, but thinking yes, you can get away, that’s what you can get, and continued that thought with – have a nice day. “Thank you I will, and I’ll be off then.” “Ok” said a relieved and somewhat astonished Aisah, “Just one thing you ought to be aware of Mrs Melvyn, for future reference that is, most djinn can, and indeed do, read thoughts” and with that he stepped outside and seemed to disappear leaving a faint smell of sulphur and maybe a little brimstone too, and a very embarrassed Aisah.

Mmmm, she thought, now that was a bit of a learning curve, as she sat back in her chair and tried to do something about the deep red blush colouring her features.

For the Love Of....

2008-06-24T16:23:00.001+08:00

THIS STORY IS ONE DAY LATE WITH THANKS TO TELEKOM MALAYSIA BERHAD AND STREAMYX

To call Rose a spinster would be unfortunate as well as incorrect. Rose had, in fact, been married in her early twenties, and although it was only for three months it was still long enough to deprive Rose of spinster status - her husband Mohan eventually found that Rubik’s Cube was more alluring, and quite possibly more interesting than she.

Well into her second score of years Rose unwittingly joined that ever growing body of middle-aged women either divorced or had never married, and became an initiate within an inner circle who had never raised children.

Rose was Auntie to many nephews and nieces, and neighbour’s children called her auntie out of respect, but it was not quite the same as bearing and raising your own children. Rose was at a loss to understand attachments that parents had for their children, the lengths they might go to protect them and the hardships they would endure to ensure their children were well cared for.

At an age when many women might have resigned themselves to being single Rose continued her quest for her perfect male – one who could save her from herself and be by her side into their dotage, and eventually death. Rose wanted a companion for life.

Rose had many suitors, lovers even, yet none hanging around long enough for her to tie them down with affectional bonds. This may have been because of the false self Rose adopted when meeting potential lovers and subsequently until such a time as her true nature was revealed.

Rose was not a bad woman, nor even an unattractive one but over the years had become more insular, hardened even, and this made it difficult for her to accept other people, and, like her attitude towards children, was at a loss to comprehend the needs of her suitors, unless they were identical to her own. Men tended to use her then, after a while, disappear.

Anusia, Rose’s good friend for twenty years, was finally moving to Sydney Australia. She had sold her house, furniture and most of the things she didn’t need to take on the journey, but there was one slight problem - Max the cat. Max had been with Anusia for two years now and she had grown to love him as if he was her child, but she simply could not take him with her. Anusia, knowing Rose’s character and temperament understood that Rose wouldn’t take Max for herself, so was asking Rose what she could do with Max, to see that he went to a good home. Rose was hesitant, but said she could take Max for a little while, just until Anusia found a permanent home for him.

Cuddly, plump and very much a people cat Max was an easy-going, loveable neutered male cat and was a perfectly amiable, loving and affectionate feline who needed nothing save for his daily intake of fish (5 meals) and copious amounts of human affection. Rose on the other hand had no need for five meals of fish a day, but was in the market for copious amounts of affection, be it human or feline, needless to say the couple gelled almost immediately.

A month into Max’s stay with Rose, Anusia called from Australia saying that she had found a delightful couple who were willing to take Max in, and gave Rose their telephone number. Rose now didn’t want Max to leave, believing him to be the perfect male - one who was always there for her, listened to her troubles without interjecting, didn’t look around at other women and took Rose for who she was, without the need for false selves. So time purred on and when Anusia called a second time to ask Rose how she had got on calling her friends, Rose had to reply that she just couldn’t bear to be parted from Max.

Not long after that call Rose was in her garden one evening, having just returned from work, and watched a nicely dressed middle-aged man crouching and stroking Max. Rose’s inclination was to dash out to ‘rescue’ Max, but could see that Max was being very affectionate, as was the man in return. Instead Rose walked up to them both and started a conversation, learnt that Peter was a cat lover, was single while his dilated pupils told her that Peter was obviously getting to like her too

The Importance of being Yusop

2008-06-23T06:39:00.002+08:00

Upon overhearing his neighbour’s conversation Julian is so outraged that he just cannot hold his tongue and serves up a splendid ace. “In tea, you put the ruddy mushrooms in tea?” Now that really is taking Englishness to the extreme dear lady.” “One may place Orange in tea and make a perfectly delightful little orange pekoe, or perform something very similar with rose petals and construct a bearable rose pekoe, or there again to the distillation of a wholesome black tea one might care to add the distinctive flavour of bergamot orange rind, and delight in Earl Grey’s particular infusion, but mushrooms may not enter your vocabulary when mentioning tea, it is surely a sacrilege of the most highest order.”

The two ladies in question, whose conversation Julian had interrupted, looked at Julian mouths gaping and shrugged in the most English of fashions, quite unwilling to return Julian’s serve and leaves the ball in the court.

Turning back to his travelling companion, and seeking a fresh game, Julian sniffed at the coffee before him and gently tried to push the glass to one side; it didn’t budge due to the dribble of drying condensed milk fastening it to the table. Fearful that the glass and its contents should tipple over and cause him endless embarrassment, Julian slowly withdrew his hand in defeat. “And what, in God’s dear sweet heaven, do you call this.” Julian motioned to the hot liquid looking up at him from its hardy Asian glass. “It’s a travesty; it doesn’t even taste like coffee my good man.” He said nodding a not very friendly nod to Pa Yusop and sensing a new set. “Heavens what a country, first it’s some completely daft old biddies ranting on about mushrooms and tea and now we have this mud which is trying to pass itself off as a drinkable beverage, but God knows this is not coffee, good grief Alan where have you brought me” - an ace straight down the middle leaving the opposition no chance to return. Alan remained silent; he found that it was best in these circumstances to let Julian just rant on - sooner or later he would calm down and they could get on with their tour.

The ten day (nine nights) tour of the state by luxury coach had ground to an unexpected halt practically outside Pa Yusop’s corner shop and kedai kopi. En Singh, the large bearded Sikh driver, explained that he was experiencing a little engine difficulty and if the passengers would care to take refreshments at the local shop they were welcome. No mention, of course, was made of the one ringgit per head En Singh was to collect from pa Yusop for every customer entering his exotic emporium.

Most had exited the bus including Mrs Gurty and her good friend Beryl, veterans of the 1960s Hippy era but now living solely on the memories of those times and their experimentations with ‘certain substances’, and Lord Julian Crammock of Crammock Hall, ex-tennis pro, with his trusty, if somewhat subdued, travelling companion Alan - of nowhere in particular.

Upon request Mrs Gurty and Beryl paid Pa the two ringgit each for their glasses of tea, considering that cheap at the price, and mooched out of the shop before Lord Julian could find any other ways of both insulting the locals and embarrassing members of the coach party. Outside Mrs Gurty passed Beryl a particularly strong smelling long hand rolled cigarette while they waited for the coach to be fixed. Julian on the other hand was casting his ever critical eyes about to see what other caustic comments may be made about this particular milieu.

Within minutes En Singh, having counted his takings, gave the all clear and the coach party returned to the luxury of air-conditioning, but not before Julian quibbled with Pa Yusop over the twenty ringgit he had just paid for two glasses of kopi tarik. “But you see, tuan, your kopi was very special, as you deserved only the very best I had to offer” Pa volleyed “But it was undrinkabley sweet my good man and I couldn’t touch a drop” Julian volleyed back “Yes, it was a critics kopi, tuan, my very own setar rusa jantan kopi – the milky sweetness is to cover the bitterness of its age” a hefty shot right on the line and with the chalk dust flying it was game, set and match to Pa Yusop who knew his game well and could serve the fastest of balls with the best.

Smile

2008-06-22T07:33:00.002+08:00

Farah was born with a disease; the doctors didn’t concern themselves by giving the illness a name as they knew no medication would put it right. Farah’s parents were told that their daughter would be, more or less, the same for the rest of her life. Were Farah born to other parents, outside of the kampung, in the city perhaps or abroad the doctors may have uttered terms like Down’s syndrome with retarded motor functionality, but this was the kampung and the good doctors believed that titles weren’t going to help Farah.

Farah grew and proved the doctors right. Farah’s mother devoted herself to the comfort of her semi-paralysed daughter who only seemed to age physically, but not mentally. At the age when other children were learning to communicate Farah seemed locked into her own world and the world of her mother’s care. Farah’s father had very little to do with her, other than to provide food and shelter, then left Farah’s total care and well-being to his wife.

By the age of nine, when other children would be seen running around the kampung chasing cats, or telling each other stories which would foolishly keep them awake at nights, Farah still had not mastered the concept of speech beyond almost indecipherable sounds escaping from an increasingly reluctant mouth. It was therefore incumbent upon Farah’s mother to learn her daughter’s language, to decipher her communication needs and lovingly observe her wants.

Despite all the negativity of her situation Farah’s mother insisted that she do what was best for her child, even though her daughter was unable to walk, or talk, she finally decided to give the child an education and enrolled her in the primary school opposite Pa Yusop’s shop. The local children were used to seeing Farah laying outside her house, shaded by the makeshift umbrella her mother had constructed of banana leaves and were more than a little surprised to see her at their school. Eventually, after the initial name calling and childish taunting had died down the other children tentatively accepted Farah for what she was, and some even felt endeared towards her helplessness.

From that first day, and religiously every school day, Farah’s mother would take her child to school and, lifting her, would climb the stairs to the fourth floor of the building with Farah in her arms then sit with her until it was time for the children to return home. While to others it may have seemed that Farah’s mother had taken a tremendous weight upon her shoulders, it never seemed that way to her as she unstintingly devoted her own life to that of her child.

Day in and day out Farah’s mother would take her child to school knowing that there was little she could learn, but wanted her to share in the experience of other children’s company and to be exposed to learning, even if she were unable to assimilate it. Farah’s mother could never have been certain that her steadfastness actually benefited her child, until the one day when she herself became ill. It was a simple cold but required Farah’s mother to stay at home and take life a little easier, the result was that Farah was unable to attend school for three days – the normal weekend plus the Monday Farah’s mother needed rest.

On that Monday Farah seemed even more restless than usual, and anyone knowing her would swear she was throwing a temper tantrum. Strange frustrated noised emanated from Farah as she thrashed her arms about on the plastic mat her mother daily laid out for her. Lunch was even more of a struggle than normal. This ‘bad’ mood of Farah’s lasted all day, except for when, worn out with her exertions, she slept.

The following day, still a little under the weather, Farah’s mother once more took her child to school and carried her up the stairs to the classroom on the fourth floor. A change immediately came over Farah as she saw the other children, suddenly she grew quiet and seemed a little more relaxed, her normally inexpressive face twitched and then grimaced a little as if in an attempt to smile.

Cat in the City

2008-06-21T07:26:00.001+08:00

It was dark. The eerie alleyway lit only by the light of the full moon. Cat had walked this way many times before but tonight the alley seemed different - somehow more menacing. The shadows lent a threat to the surroundings, changing day shapes into nightmarish figures.

Cat had grown used to this, after all his night vision was good - very good in fact. Yet tonight there was something else. He was alert. It always paid to be alert and ready for anything, so when the figures launched themselves from the shadows he was as ready as he could ever be. Cat’s reactions were beyond mere thought; they were survival instinct honed down the years by practise and conflict.

The first assailant caught Cat a swipe across his back. This was not a wise thing to do to a hardened combatant. You took your enemy out with one blow or prepare to take the consequences. Cat’s instincts and lightning fast reflexes ensured that he had not been caught a fuller blow. Cat never gave his attacker a second chance. A strike with his steely claws and a savage bite to the neck laid the big brown city cat low. Not killing him, but keeping him out of action for a while. Cat was not about to waste his energy here. The next two antagonists were a little half hearted in their attack and Cat managed to dispatch them almost without thinking.

It was the shabby looking old black male which Cat kept in his peripheral sight, expecting some sort of onslaught. Tonight it didn’t happen. The assailants limped or ran off. Cat was not stupid enough to think that this was the end of this conflict, far from it. Cat knew that he had not heard the last of that old male. He knew in his heart that he had a nemesis.

Keeping one scarred eye out for trouble and ears always alert, Cat licked and brushed himself the best he could. Scrapes received during the fight were merely flesh wounds and he had weathered many of those in his time, so he didn’t allow them to bother him.

Cat sat. Shadows from the alleyway played across his face, highlighting the forked lightning shaped scars etched onto his nose. For a male cat he was almost beautiful, not handsome, though of late the grey in his fur was beginning to show, while his facial features were deceptively soft and attractive, masking some of Cat’s more aggressive traits. The once highly distinctive black and white markings on his coat were now mottled with silver hairs.

Cat viewed the world from behind delicate mid-green eyes which shone with his innate intelligence and abilities. His eyes and ears were ever vigilant for threats, sending wake-up calls to an ageing muscular frame, keeping him in a state of constant adrenalin alertness.

The warning growl of an angry opponent came to Cat’s ears almost too late. No sooner did he hear it than the big male cat was upon him, biting and scratching at him. Round and round they went, over and over onto the grass and into the bush, cat on cat, both growling, both hissing. Cat, for the first time, was fighting for his life, scrabbling and scrambling, gouging and lunging each trying to get the upper hand in this furious battle, then the attacker hesitated, Cat lashed out catching the older cat across his shoulder, followed this with a quick bite to the back and another to the right fore arm. The older cat was down. Cat swiped him across the face, just to leave his mark. The older cat ran.

Cat stood proud, but still had some serious bites and scratches needing attention. Cat limped back, not bad he thought, for a kampung cat in the city.

Cat’s delicate hearing had caught a sound down the alley. Cat looked but all he could see were two greenish/yellow eyes peering at him from a distance.

He was sure it was that old male cat, still observing him, waiting, eyeing up the odds. The alley was still except for a rat or two no-one had bothered to catch – when you were as well fed as city cats are, you have no need to chase down rats for food, only for sport. And there was sport aplenty hanging onto your territory and preventing other cats from taking over.

Melvyn the Bomoh

2008-06-20T06:41:00.003+08:00

Melvyn was a bomoh. In other lands and in other times perhaps he might have been called a dukun, shaman, witch doctor, medicine man, herbalist or any title from a very long list of other titles emanating from far distance shores, which really only mean bomoh.

It was most unusual for a bomoh to be called Melvyn, and he took great pride in that. Bomohs would normally probably be called something like Phuat, or Mohamad Alifen or maybe even Iskander but Melvyn felt that a bomoh’s name should be a little more unusual, something that would give greater depth to his standing in the kampung community, and so after much deliberation chose the name Melvyn, his given name was Mustapha Ali.

Melvyn didn’t actually live in the kampung, he lived somewhere, and only he knew where, around Pregnant Lady Mountain, and kept his home a secret due to a need to protect himself from spirits, djinn and the occasional travelling salesman. He rented a small shack in the kampung and used that like a surgery where he would meet and greet people, if he was in the right mood, otherwise he wouldn’t.

Melvyn actually loved his life as a bomoh because it meant he could be as nice or as rude to people as he wanted and people would just accept this, explaining “Bomohs are always like that”, which was true because they knew they could get away with it. But more than a license to be rude Melvyn enjoyed people’s dependence on him, and it was a great amusement to him to learn of the messes people got themselves into. He had, in fact, thought about writing a book or maybe even a series of stories about that, but someone had beaten him to it.

In fact if you ignored the dealing with spirits and other worldly creatures, though to be honest it was not wise to ignore them, being a bomoh, Melvyn thought, was a little like being a combination of social worker, psychologist and psychiatrist. He sorted people’s problems out, gave them advice on how to act or interact and if all that failed he would give them a potion, and mostly the potions worked, some because of the placebo effect but some because, well, they did.

The only downside in being a bomoh was being single. Melvyn had to be honest and admit that there were precious few women who wanted to be known as Mrs Bomoh. Sex was another thing. Yes he could have sex with any number of women, men too if he was that way inclined, just by using a few drops of his love potion number 10 – he thought nine was a bit clichéd. His victim would drink the potion and fall madly in love with him, for about an hour, and that was all the time it took, but that wasn’t for Melvyn, he felt, in a way, it was cheating.

Melvyn had resigned himself to the single life and looking wistfully at the married couples who came to see him to sort their sexual problems out. But then it all changed. Much to Melvyn’s surprise little love notes started to appear inside his ‘surgery’ hut, delivered in his absence. At first he thought it might be a spiteful customer whose potion didn’t work, or a joke by one of the many naysayers, but on re-reading the first few notes there appeared a sort of honesty about them, the sort of honesty that you couldn’t possibly pay someone for.

The note delivery continued. Melvyn was totally bemused, he didn’t have a clue as to who was sending these increasingly delightful notes. Yes he could have asked one of the djinns under his control to find out, but aside from the payback aspect Melvyn wanted to enjoy the thrill of the chase, if chase it were. And it wouldn’t be long before he found out.

Nur Aisah had waited long enough. She had posted notes on Melvyn’s door for too long and now was time to tell him how she felt, but, and there was the but, he was a bomoh and if he didn’t like her he could make life, literally, very uncomfortable for her. Girding her loins, whatever that means, Nur Aisah tapped tentatively on the door to Melvyn’s hut, now was the time she said to herself, now I will tell him how I feel.

The door opened and Melvyn stood there smiling at her. At first Nur Aisah found that a little disconcerting, she hadn’t really seen Melvyn smile before and was initially a little worried by it, especially as it seemed fixed there, unmoving.

Melvyn had, in the end, cheated. He used the one gift his father had given him – second sight and conjured up Nur Aisah’s face as the one who had left the notes, and why she had. That was the day that Melvyn was really glad that we was a bomoh, it was also the day that he felt the need to make a potion to cure a permanently smiling face, but ultimately there was really no need - marriage fixed that.

A Flight of Fancy

2008-06-19T06:30:00.001+08:00

It was not normal for a seventeen year old boy to fly, well not without an aeroplane, helicopter or some such mechanical device, and stating that fact I should leave the narrative here, because it is, outside of comic books, impossible.

The reason I continue is that even though we have established that it is indeed impossible for a seventeen year old boy to fly without aid, the undeniable fact is that he did, not just the once, though in itself that would have been enough, but continued to do so, at will as it were. Let me take you through this most unlikely story and then see just what you think.

I was writing my daily story for my blog, a small affair and one that you need not be too bothered about, but the fact is I tend to look around for stories which I incorporate into the blog. Sometimes I ask my wife and sometimes I ask my friends and neighbours, today I asked my step-son Hamdi.

Hamdi was quite forthcoming as he said “Dad why not write about me”, I said that I already had in my little piece about the Mat Rempit racers, he said “No write about me, the truth instead of those fiction stories you make up”. So curiously I asked him what I should write, expecting something about skin-heads, or Punk or how to smoke without getting caught behind the bike sheds at school. Then Hamdi said “No dad, tell them about my flying”. “Your what!” I said more than a little incredulously, waiting for the inevitable smile that obviously this time never came. “Flying” he said.

Oh dear thought I, drugs, it’s got to be drugs, any moment now he is going to reveal the taking of LSD, Peyote, Mescaline or one of the new laboratory engineered drugs and my mind is going to crash and I really will not be able to cope with all this, not to mention what I am going to say to his mother. But no he said, “Fly Dad, like jumping but staying up in the air, like Superman”. That was it. Then I was convinced if this wasn’t drugs then he was having the breakdown and not me, maybe early onset schizophrenia or some other psychotic disturbance. So I looked him straight in the eyes, him having two, and searched for signs of drugs or psychosis, though to be honest I hadn’t a clue about either so maybe that was a waste of time.

Then he smiled and said “Come outside Dad”. I was more than a little apprehensive and checked the wall calendar on the way just to make sure that it said June and not April, and then we were outside, just around the corner of the house – his usual spot for smoking illicit cigarettes in the evening after dinner, and said “Watch”. Watch, watch what. I looked about and saw the rabbits doing rabbity things, the cats watching the rabbits doing rabbit things and in the distance water buffalo secretly eyeing my sprouting mango shoots. But what I didn’t notice was Hamdi floating a good six inches off the ground.

When I eventually did notice I smiled in a way that indicated that perhaps it was me that was going mad and not him, or that there might be some American illusionist hiding in the bushes about to announce himself and encourage me to clap and say what a clever fellow he was, and just how did he do that. But there was no illusionist, only the illusion, because I was pretty damn sure now that it must be an illusion, because as I have said seventeen year old boys do not fly. That is not to indicate in any way that people of other ages do fly, because I am quite certain they don’t. But there again I always had this strange assumption that Hamdi didn’t fly either.

Hamdi rose slightly more in the air and sort of glided over our compound gate, did a u-turn, not unlike Superman in one of those Chris Reeves films, and glided back to me, and said “There Dad I told you I could fly”. I sat, my back up against the painted wall of our house and felt how I imagined someone on LSD must feel – everything becoming insubstantial, cardboard like, unreal just as Hamdi’s flight was unreal, after all how could it be real, there was just no sense to it, therefore it could not be real and I was definitely having that breakdown.

After that one incident Hamdi demonstrated his flying skills a number of times before I gradually managed to salvage my sanity and, though totally bemused, started to believe in the boy. He really could fly. So I asked him what was next, being more than a little facetious I freely admit, a costume?

Seduction

2008-06-18T06:45:00.001+08:00

It was never altogether certain just what was in Sita’s mind that evening when she was flirting with her brother in law, whether she saw herself as a free independent woman, stylish, educated and more than a little carefree, or whether she acknowledged the reality of her husband, away on the other side of the country, and her two children currently being minded by her mother/their doting grandmother. But it was certain that she was flirting, and with her older sister’s husband.

Sita was an attractive young woman in her late twenties, she had married Ram some seven years earlier and everyone had said what a fine couple they made, the fact that Ram was nine years her senior didn’t seem to enter into the debate. The first few years went swimmingly well but gradually an estrangement took place in their marriage, some say that was because of Ram’s drinking and gambling, others that Sita already had roaming eyes which she was known to have flashed at the foreigners working alongside her in the office.

Increasingly Ram’s work took him away from his home, his wife and the children he adored. It may have been because of this that Sita was getting even more bored and restless than was normal for her. Sita had taken some time off from her important office job in the city to take the children to visit with her mother in the kampung, and to see her sister Urmila recently arrived from England, as well as to meet her sister’s husband for the very first time.

At first Laurence appeared to take little notice of Sita for he was still jet lagged, and no doubt also in awe of his surroundings, so he stayed by his wife’s side for the first few days of their visit. You could tell that this irked Sita somewhat, for she really wasn’t used to men not paying her attention and somewhere, something within her mind made the decision to pay closer attention to this man not paying her his.

When they met Sita would try to get Laurence alone, but was being constantly thwarted by members of her family hanging around, and Sita was beginning to make a very large mountain out of a quite inconsequential mound. Sita’s brief interest in this man started to become almost an obsession while her mild smiles became deeply flirtatious looks, but to little avail.

Then finally the day came Sita had waited for. Urmila had taken Sita’s children out for the day, Laurence had paid a quick visit to the local temple but had arrived back early because of the day’s heat, there was only mother in the house and she was getting slow and a little deaf with age. Sita quickly changed into her electric blue sari and went to talk with Laurence but when she eventually found him he was sitting talking to her mother, he in English and she in Tamil. Sita inwardly boiled, this, she thought, was getting ridiculous.

Later that day Urmila still had not arrived back so there was still only mother at home, Laurence had just stirred from his afternoon nap and knowing this Sita took full advantage of the situation and struck up a conversation with Laurence about writing and authors, thinking these must be interests of his, and yes he took the bait talking about Zola. From her position in the front bedroom, and Laurence’s position outside on the dual seated metal swing, Sita quickly came to sit by his side and made certain that he was in reach of her French perfume. Now she could begin her game in earnest.

With her soft voice, French perfume, electric blue sari, her long soft black hair brushing his arm and the batting of her eyelashes slowly Sita began the seduction by enwrapping his mind with her scent and deluging him with her words, making sure that she came across as demure and enticing.

As Sita was putting the finishing touches to what she was now considering to be her most successful enchantment Laurence turned to her and said “Did you watch the match then?” Match, MATCH, what match thought Sita, basketball, tennis, polo, kabaddi. Then the uncomfortable truth hit. Oh my God this man is talking about football while I am trying to seduce him! It seems that while Laurence was sitting quietly he was actually replaying the 1994 FIFA World Cup in his mind, his silence Sita had mistaken for interest. When Sita spoke of Emile Zola, the writer, Laurence thought of Gianfranco Zola the Italian footballer.

This, of course, is why Urmila confidently left her husband behind, in the full knowledge that he was consumed by the seduction ....of football (the beautiful game) and little else.

The Sweetness of Revenge

2008-06-17T06:56:00.001+08:00

Sugar and spice and all things nice that’s what little girls are made of, and in Opah’s case that was literally true. Being confirmed a diabetic had not made Opah’s life any sweeter for her, in fact it left a distinctly sour taste in her mouth, not only was she not to indulge in her favourite pastime – eating sweet things, but she had to constantly watch what she did as well, just in case she injured herself and had to go to hospital, for diabetes effected her whole body.

In the past Opah had been tough, in fact it is true to say that the only sweetness about her was in her blood. She had given her children such a strict upbringing that it was a wonder that any stood by her in adulthood, but they did. From the very outset Opah had been a cantankerous and self opinionated woman who believed that life was tough and that you needed to toughen up your kids for them to survive.

This strict regime resulted in many beatings for the children and cursing from their mother. Nothing the children could do was right for their mother, for she had her own non-variable set of standards which only she could live up to. Bad mouthing by the children resulted in a mouth full of fresh red chillies, lateness required a beating with a rotan stick and looking at boys held quite unimaginable repercussions and language which would have made a hardened sailor blush. It has to be said that Opah held a reign of terror over her children, and as a result they tended to grow up obedient and respectful, at least on the outside where it counted.

Little in this world is forgotten and children, now grown to adults, still maintain particles of the child within and the things they experienced whilst growing. Opah’s children were no different. Although they loved their mother, for she was after all their mother and nothing could dislodge her from that lofty position, the past clung to them like a bad odour and sometimes, just sometimes things happened not out of a conscious desire for revenge, but a subconscious one.

Opah now lived for the times that she could outwit her wardens, as she saw her children, and indulge herself in anything sweet, though Coke Cola was her number one all time favourite. Time after time she would sneak biscuits, sweets, chocolate and anything containing high amounts of sugar into her bedroom and hide them away until such time she figured it was safe to consume them. This naturally meant that her diabetes was way out of control, as her periodic visits to the clinic could tell.

One morning, after several carefree days of high sugar consumption, Opah awoke to find large boils under her arms. At first she left alone them thinking they might go away on their own accord, but they stayed and grew. Eventually Opah had to mention it to her daughter and they went to the clinic.

Opah had thought that the clinic doctor would, at the very worse, give her a poultice, some antibiotics and send her on her way, she was not aware of the conversation her daughter had with the doctor just prior to their arrival. The doctor had said to Opah’s daughter that there were two possible ways of dealing with these types of boils, one was to set a poultice and hope that the boils reduced over a few weeks, the other was to lance the boils and let them disappear quickly. Opah’s daughter had opted for the later especially when the doctor warned her that this particular course of action would be effective, but quite painful. An inner smile formed in the adult child’s mind.

The doctor lanced the boils while her daughter had a pang of guilt at Opah’s obvious discomfort, and panged with a little guilt and a little pleasure for the next few days every time Opah squealed as the cream was applied to the sore boils, to prevent them turning septic.

Sun Sea and....

2008-06-16T06:45:00.001+08:00

For a moment PakMat stopped pushing the scuffed metal wheelbarrow across the sand, a small sharp stone had insinuated itself between his instep and his blue plastic Japanese slippered right foot causing him considerable pain. A moment later, the stone removed, PakMat resumed his journey - the same journey he had taken now for the past three months, ever since his wife had become ill.

Over forty years PakMat and Mak Minah lived as happily as any ageing couple could in their little house near the sea. They had the occasional argument, but then there was always the making up after and that was well worth the initial raise in blood pressure. PakMat had found it difficult to settle back on land after a life at sea and took work from one of the local tin mine companies, when that company went into decline PakMat took odd jobs and began to grow a small coconut orchard which was to cushion the economic blow upon retirement.

Generally the couple’s health was good until Mak Minah suffered the stroke which was to weaken the lower portion of her body, making her fall victim to paraparesis. At first the couple were devastated and PakMat was a little panicked not knowing what to do to help the true love of his life. Slowly they devised a way of coping and had started to settle into a new life with the husband as carer to the wife, when one of Pa Yusop’s neighbours made a suggestion.

Soo Ong suggested they try a sand treatment. According to Soo Ong the Chinese knew that being buried in sand was known to alleviate the very type of weakness that Mak Minah was suffering from and many used it to cure lumbago, rheumatism and sciatica, but she cautioned that the couple must be very patient as the results were not to be seen overnight. Having no alternative suggestions and believing the doctors to be wrong in saying that this would be a permanent condition, PakMat mentioned they could at the very least give it a try. And so they did.

The very next day PakMat carefully lifted his small slim beloved wife into their garden wheelbarrow and pushed the rickety contraption the two hundred meters to the beach. The small compressed path made the early going fairly easy as the couple anxiously moved towards the beach. Pushing the wheelbarrow became a little more involved when they reached the sand but PakMat was steadfastly determined and pushed ever harder until he reached a spot he deemed to be about right.

Carefully PakMat lifted his wife onto the sand and began to dig a slight hollow for her to rest in, then, after lovingly placing Mak Minah into the hollow, he spread one of his older sarongs over her body and gently scooped sand over his wife until her legs and lower body were entirely covered. There they sat under an old umbrella, on the sand, for an hour each and every day and on returning home PakMat would gently massage his wife’s legs, performing this routine daily for the next three months.

Pak Mat stopped pushing the barrow, they had reached the chosen spot, and with care he stooped to lift his wife, ‘’PakMat there’s no need, I can get out on my own” “But I want to this one last time Minah” and with that PakMat lifted his wife onto the sand knowing that she was stronger now and really didn’t need his help, but in his own way he had come to treasure these moments.

Together they sat on the beach, under the umbrella, both gazing out to sea remembering those three months of anxiety, uncertainty and never really knowing if the treatment would work yet both had been determined and gradually, week by week they noticed slight improvement in Mak Minah’s condition until the glorious day when she had attempted to walk again, and then they knew there would be an eventual success.

Vultures

2008-06-15T07:58:00.001+08:00

Of all the people in the kampung Tariq was a tireless campaigner; any issue Tariq got his teeth into got a thorough ravaging and was left with indelible bite marks. Tariq campaigned mostly for the type of local issues that other people may think both trivial and not worth the effort but Tariq was always there bothering the bothersome.

Witnessing the trouble school children had crossing the road Tariq campaigned for an official school crossing, and won. Seeing that a local T-junction needed traffic lights Tariq campaigned until traffic lights were indeed erected. Knowing that vehicles were travelling dangerously fast through the kampung Tariq was responsible for speed bumps (sleeping policemen) to be constructed so that the children and animals were safer.

One issue which plagued Tariq was the ethics of the local break down service. At nearly every set of traffic lights and at many places where accidents were known to occur there sat a grey car with a big yellow band across its middle, bearing the simple legend C.C.Lee. For those not in the know C.C.Lee was short for Chup Choy Lee the owner of the local, and soon to be State, breakdown service and accident repair shops.

Tariq felt that the yellow banded cars were like vultures simply waiting for other peoples’ misfortune and then feeding off their misery. These cars waited as if to prey upon hapless drivers using their bad fortune for the good fortune of the breakdown company greasing a police palm here and an insurance company there to make sure that C.C.Lee and company got the rights to repair as well as transport the damaged vehicles.

The good Tariq felt this was not only unethical but also bordering on the severely illegal and he set about doing all he could to put matters right.

For months Tariq worried the local council, turning up at their offices nearly every day until he was finally given an audience with the councillor who mattered. Then it was the turn of the local police. Tariq tracked down the one man who might be able to do something about the vultures and constantly plagued him, almost becoming the subject of a restraining order in the process until he got the message home. Then it was the turn of the press, and so on and so forth until the tireless Tariq had covered practically all the bases, and had C.C.Lee up against the proverbial fence.

Gradually motorists began to see less and less grey cars with large yellow bands waiting at traffic lights, or at accident black spots, and there came a day when there were none at all, and Tariq sighed with relief for he had won one of the lengthiest campaigns of his local career. It was a sheer delight for Tariq not to have to see those grey vultures waiting for an accident to happen and feeding off the unfortunate accident victims, victimising them and making money in that way.

So it was with irony that Tariq should be travelling a little too fast one evening, actually racing to get home for his evening prayer, when he swerved to avoid a pangolin (anteater) and drove the car into a storm ditch. It was a common accident black-spot which would have been manned by a grey car with a yellow stripe at any other time but, since Tariq’s very effective campaign, was now deserted.

Shaken, a little bruised and with his only means of transport in the ditch Tariq called C.C.Lee breakdown service (and accident repairs) on his hand phone only to hear that they no longer serviced that particular area in the evening, and could he call back in the morning. The walk home was exhausting as well as a little humiliating.

Kampung World

2008-06-14T07:42:00.001+08:00

Pa Yusop was not one to be called a nationalist or a hater of foreigners, his own son-in-law being a Mat salleh/Orang Putih tended to give Pa an altogether different slant on life, but there were times when Pa would mentally dig his size ten heels in and not budge a centimetre. This was one of those times.

It had recently come to Pa’s attention that the local State Tourist Board was seen eyeing up his kampung. Surveying youths were dispatched to literally size up the kampung and make note of its diameter and dimensions, which in between sending SMSs to each other, leaning on theodolites and smoking they eventually did and trucked off back to their gurus.

Men in suits appeared with bright yellow hard hats to protect them from wanton nature and quite possibly from Pa Yusop too. They parked their larger than strictly necessary cars, jeeps and sundry SUVs in the most difficult to bypass places in the kampung and proceeded to wave arms point at things, buildings and people, then moved on to other equally as fascinating parts of the kampung and did the same thing all over again. After an hour or two the men in suits and cranial protection escaped back to wherever they had originally hailed from.

Time picked up its dainty feet and tiptoed rather than marched on and more men appeared in the kampung, one could tell from the salaaming, the gesticulating and the constant deferring to that these men, wearing songkok, were dignitaries deigning to momentarily co-exist in the kampung amidst the rakyat. They stayed but a few moments, enough time to breathe in the same microbes as the commoners and that, apparently, was more than enough time and they left.

As you might imagine the kampung was all a-buzz with rumour and wild speculation, all except Pa Yusop who had other ways of skinning this particular kuching and dropped some words in the ears of relatives – people who knew people who knew people in the local council, and back word came.

The now infamous Tourist Hub, reporting to the quite obscure State Tourist Board had come up with a plan to generate greater tourism within the state. Having abandoned ideas for elephant safaris due to the lack of elephants and cancelled the Disney type Mosque theme park because it had already been done elsewhere, the brilliant if a little tarnished tourist chaps came up with the idea of KAMPUNG WORLD.

Kampung World was to be a complete kampung remodelled in concrete, aluminium, vulcanised rubber and plastic, with a dash of chrome and coloured lights to add to the entirely natural effect they were after. A kampung would be chosen, bulldozed to the ground then rebuilt exactly, to the very last concrete tree stump, using the previously mentioned materials. The re-built corner shop would house the very latest in Japanese robotic technology – a robot of one corner shop owner replete with white topi and chequered trousers, the re-modelled school would only echo to the sounds of children, there being no actual children there and all the other kampung people would be played by bit actors in this bizarre play, clocking off at 5 pm and returning at 9am the following morning.

Now comprehending the truth of the matter Pa Yusop set the wheels in motion to ensure that the kampung would stay as the kampung and not as a theme park designed to give tourists an entirely bogus vision of rural life. It just so happened that Pa Yusop had recently discovered that the Chief Minister of the state was a long lost nephew of his, removed many times, and so distant as to be almost in space and half Chinese but nevertheless a relative, and that is all it took.

Kampung World was put permanently on hold while fresh ideas were being muted, such as the largest Polar Bear reserve in South East Asia, granted it would take copious amounts of ice and snow to be manufactured, not to mention the right kind of fish to suit dietary needs - for the Eskimo Polar Bear keepers, but it would certain be a tourist draw.

The Lizard Wife

2008-06-13T07:08:00.000+08:00

A long time ago when the kampung was young there lived a small naked house lizard. As the lizard grew she became attached to the humans living in the house and eventually had fallen in love with a tall beautiful young man with a handsome face. Every day the lizard watched the young man, observed his manners, listened to how he spoke with his mother and witnessed how he helped around the house.

The young man blossomed every day and in no way resembled the lecherous old man that his father was. The young man’s father had eyes not just for his wife but for practically every woman in the kampung and was known to go running after any woman who caught his fancy. But the son was pure in heart and had more of his mother’s goodness in him.

Day in and day out the little lizard ached to see the young man and pretty soon was so love sick that she visited a bomoh to seek help. In those days it was well known that bomohs could not only talk to people and spirits but could also talk with animals, and especially the house lizards. The young female house lizard told the bomoh of her feelings for the young man and the bomoh explained that he might have a magic spell to solve her problem.

The next day the young female house lizard returned to see the bomoh who produced a potion proclaiming that it would turn her into a human so that she could be with her love. The bomoh warned that the change would be entirely conditional, she could stay as a human woman as long as the human man was in love with her, after forty-eight hours if the man did not fall madly in love with her she would change permanently back into a lizard, and if, once being in love with her, he should sometime change his heart she would instantly resume lizard form.

The young female lizard thanked the bomoh and with the confidence of youth assured him that once a human woman she would remain so until she died, because she had faith not only in her ability to charm her young handsome man, but also in her ability to keep him in love with her. And so she drank the potion.

The air wavered, hot went cold and cold went hot and amidst a cloud of multicoloured smoke a naked young woman formed from where the lizard had stood. They chose the name Nur Liza and the bomoh gave her clothes to wear and wished her well. Pretty soon Nur Liza met up with her young handsome man and used all of her personal charms and womanly abilities to encourage him to fall in love with her, and fall in love he did.

Before the forty-eight hour period had passed Yusuf fell head over heels in love with Nur Liza and remained in love with her during their courtship, their eventual marriage and for many years later. All in the kampung would ogle the couple saying how well suited they were, two such beautiful people, well mannered and gentle and laughed at the fact that Nur Liza always felt cold to the touch unlike her hot blooded husband. And so they lived happily.

After twenty years of marriage Nur Liza was still a very happy woman living with the man she cherished, but Yusuf had begun to cast glancing eyes at women passing their wooden kampung house. Some gossips in the kampung started to tell tales about Yusuf’s father and hint that Yusuf had the same blood, and therefore.....

It was one night after the holy month of Ramadan that a reluctant Yusuf followed his wife to bed, now becoming uncomfortable with his wife’s ever-cold skin against his body. Eventually they slept and in the morning Nur Liza saw the world and her husband were huge and quickly realised that she had turned back into the lizard she was. She had but a moment to think before she was chased by their pet cat and had to quickly run up to the ceiling where she stayed and watched her husband slowly turning into a black cockroach, and realised that the bomoh had been up to his old tricks again.

The Photograph

2008-06-12T07:46:00.001+08:00

Vijaya scooped to pick up the old photograph which had fallen as she moved her battered leather suitcase from off the top of the dusty and cobweb clustered wardrobe. The photograph, now resting on a worn Axminster carpet, had fallen face down so she hadn’t notice its subject until she turned it over and gave out a little squeal of joy as she did so.

She had long since forgotten about this photograph, taken by her brother long before she moved to London, taken before she had even thought to move out of her kampung, let alone the country. But there it was a little dusty and scratched with the passage of time, but still a poignant reminder of how life was back then, back before the advent of the race to match the west in everything her country could, back when life was still relatively simple - this man’s smiling face reminded her of those times now so precious to her memory.

But how could she have forgotten this photograph, but she had in the turmoil of moving, rearranging her belongings time and time again as her life changed from single to married to divorced and remarried, still somehow this picture had followed her from the kampung and now to Roman Road, the flat, and the wardrobe.

A small, thin, middle-aged Indian man with crinkled dark, but greying, hair stood wearing a short sleeved white shirt and pale green shorts holding onto his black Hercules man’s bicycle. One hand was holding the chromium plated handlebar while the other was resting and holding onto red sheeting on top of a painted wooden box firmly affixed to the rear of his cycle by a makeshift wooden carrier. Painted on the side of the pale yellow box, in a soft blue was the legend – Roti in hand painted capital letters, and inside the box, witnessed through the clear glass windowpanes, were regimental ranks of uncut bread seated on the upper most shelf and a variety of soft rolls on the lower.

That day the Roti Man had turned his face to her little brother holding the camera, posed, and gave a broad smile as if to ensure his place in history and to remind Vijaya of gentler times amidst the stress and upheaval of modern city life. The man, his bread, her dear mother, her brother and sisters all now moved away from the kampung where the photograph was taken, existed in her memory for as long as she looked at that picture. Looking into this image of the man with his bicycle she could hear her mother’s soft voice calling in Tamil, gentling chastising her for buying sweet rolls when there was food on the table, cautioning her against standing in the hot afternoon sun for too long.

He had been a gentle older man who arrived daily without fail to bring the family its bread, sometimes Vijaya’s mother would pass the time of day with him, but mostly just requested his wares and paid, not wanting to be seen gossiping. But Vijaya and her siblings liked to gossip with the man, play with him, tease him about his bicycle and his age, secretly calling him names, behind his back, in the way that children are prone to. But that was nearly thirty year ago and much had changed in that time.

Vijaya carefully placed the photograph on the living room shelf, about midway between the kitchen and the large windows, and told herself that she really must buy a frame for it. She turned and opened the French windows to her thirteenth floor flat to get some fresh air into the musty room, and in so doing allowed a gust of wind to lift and carry the fragile photograph and her ephemeral memories away.

The Substitute

2008-06-11T06:52:00.001+08:00

After many months minding his father’s shop Nawar decided to return to law and sought an opening to continue his internship. This left Pa Yusop in a quandary about managing the shop alone, he was not getting any younger and had got used to Nawar taking the lead in the shop leaving Pa to roam with his other children.

The answer came one day when one of Pa’s nephews – Syarul, began asking if Pa knew of any job openings in the area, Pa carefully considered then replied yes. And that, as they say, was that. Nawar returned to practising law and Syarul took his place in the shop, leaving Pa to once again visit with old friends and relatives before they all passed over.

Syarul was a great asset to Pa and diligently went to work. Before Nawar left he taught Syarul all he knew about making teh and kopi tarik, shop prices, opening times and generally how to manage the shop in the way that Pa had become accustomed. For the first few weeks Syarul was the model shopkeeper’s apprentice and always arrived on time to open the shop, he cleaned the shop until it practically sparkled and was a wizard at till work and customer care in fact Pa believed that he could not have chosen better.

It was in the third month that people began to notice a change in Syarul. Syarul came down with a particularly nasty cold and complained of aching bones, sore throat, mild fever and all the symptoms which could describe a cold or Dengue fever. During this period Syarul began taking cold tablets Pa often sold in the shop, these coupled with panadol and plenty of fluids seemed to see off the virus and Syarul went back to work. A few days later Syarul began to suffer with a congested nose, and once more took the cold medication Pa kept in the store. Soon Syarul found that he felt much better, much more alive when he took the cold medicine and began to take it even though the cold and sinus problems had cleared up.

Syarul felt great and positively buzzed through his work finding that he accomplished all his chores in record time and simply felt wonderful, apart from a slightly pulsating heart. The eventual down side was that Syarul didn’t feel great unless he took his daily dose of cold medication, then two doses then three. Suddenly Syarul wasn’t feeling so great he was getting very irritable with customers and shouting and making all kinds of threats. Syarul didn’t feel right in himself, he was jittery, uneasy, jumpy all the time, his skin was beginning to turn yellowish and was developing a cold sweat. Even quite large doses of his cold medication only now eased his congested nose but did nothing about him feeling lousy and irritable.

Pa asked Syarul to visit the clinic, Syarul refused, and refused to even admit that he had a problem, especially to himself. So Pa took matters into his own hands.

One night when Syarul had gone home and locked the shop Pa reopened the shop and took away all the cold medication. The next morning Syarul became frantic when he was unable to find his saviour medicine and for a few moments went berserk knocking over glasses, pushing things out of the way and all in a desperate search for the cold medication. It wasn’t until Pa arrived an hour later to find Syarul lying on the shop-floor crying that Syarul was able to admit he had a problem. Pa and Nawar closed the shop between them and escorted Syarul to a local hospital out-patients department, there Syarul was diagnosed with a worsening liver dysfunction, and a chronic amphetamine addiction - due to the cold medication. Pa never sold that medication in the shop again, just in case.

Hair today gone tomorrow

2008-06-10T07:23:00.001+08:00

Vel sat on the bright red plastic chair outside his barber’s shop shaded from the day’s heat by the slight shop overhang. In the air a strong smell of jasmine incense emanating from glowing sticks placed on his shop altar earlier that morning, with it a fainter smell - the garland of fresh jasmine flowers Vel had bought from the market on his way to open the shop.

Sporting a proud handlebar moustache (ala Tamil film villain) well trimmed black wavy hair and a yellow kumkum mark on his forehead Vel displayed average weight and height for a man of southern Indian descent. Since his apprenticeship after school Vel had been a man’s man’s barber, and when he accrued enough money set up shop in a small shack, later creating a proper barber establishment.

That was 20 years ago, and Vel had scarcely looked back. Over time Vel struck up symbiotic relationships with many of his customers – he needed them to keep his family in the means to which they would dearly love to become accustomed, his customers needed periodic hair-cuts to prevent them drowning in hair, so all went well. Well that is until the boys in the kampung started becoming young modern men.

Young men became middle-aged, middle-aged men got older, old men tended to die and boys became young men with needs and demands very different from their fathers and grandfathers. Mohammad Hilman was one such boy who became a young man.

At first things went swimmingly, Mohammad Hilman and his contemporaries at the local secondary school all came for haircuts on a regular basis and Vel gave them exactly what they wanted - the usual schoolboy cuts and nothing too fancy. Later, when the boys became a little fashion conscious they all opted for shorter haircuts, and again Vel was happy to comply. A mixture of a mistaken zeal for nationalism, and influence from the American neo-skin-head rock groups seen on the local satellite TV stations fostered a new skin-head look for the secondary school boys, and again Vel was happy to provide the cut. Happier still because the skin-head look grew out quicker than other cuts and therefore the boys needed to return on a more frequent basis.

However the skin-head look was a mere blip on the radar of young men’s hair fashion succeeded by an even bigger blip – the new punk look. Although both these styles had their helicon days in the 1970s and 80s, long before the present crop of eager young men had arrived mewing and puking, energetic new rocks bands of the 2000s sought to revive these fashions with the secondary school boys following their idols’ leads. More hair fashion meant more profit for coiffeur Vel and he was heard happily whistling popular A.R.Rahman tunes as he cut the boys’ hair.

Then disaster struck. 1960s heavy metal music and hippy fashion supplanted both Skin-head and Punk styles. The young men started to grow their hair longer, and longer, and longer still. Worse still some of the middle-age men took to wearing their hair a little longer and tried to replicate the look of proud warriors. Vel was devastated, his business suffered as men went longer and longer between cuts, his broad smile was reduced to a thin lipped grimace and the wind went out of his whistle. For some months Vel would sit alone outside of his shop watching his previous customers flick at their now flowing locks, and heave a heavy sigh.

But fortune being what it is, and fashion being ephemeral, as soon as the summer heat started to bite back came the school boys and back came the middle-aged men all clamouring for cooler hair styles and complaining of the heat. Vel never rested on his proverbial laurels again.

My Enemy's Enemy

2008-06-09T07:48:00.001+08:00

Amidst his tropical fruit trees and relatively spacious compound Salleh lived a mostly unplanned life in the kampung. He dwelt in a comfortable double-story house built in the centre of his plot of land surrounded by the trees and plants he loved the best. Over the years, Salleh as well as plants, had gathered about him a menagerie of animals including two short-legged chickens, two large white ducks with stunning yellow beaks, two handsomely marked male cats and two wives.

The last item had come as much as a surprise to Salleh as it had to his colleagues, friends, relations, and of course his first wife. It was never meant to be, but Salleh, in common with a great many men, had not been thinking with the organ designed for such, but instead became carried away in a fit of lust and utmost stupidity. The flirtation with his bank teller was not supposed to reach beyond a smile and some batting of eyelashes, but smiles led to words and these had been Salleh’s downfall. Salleh would be the first person to admit that words had never sat easy with him, when he was not stumbling over them they tended to trip him up, and that was what had happened. He had landed himself in a hole due to his inability to think through moments of desire and passion, his own words to her inflamed him even more than her words to him, and together the grand total of words between them dug a great big hole for Salleh to fall head over heels into, and then he had to cope with the concept of having two wives, and loving each as much as the other.

Those first weeks of his guilt admission to wife number one were shear hell and torture for Salleh, but nevertheless well deserved and it must be said that he took his punishment like a man – he slunk off to his mates, smoked too much and bitterly regretted that he didn’t drink alcohol. In many respects Salleh was fortunate that his religion did allow his polygamy, but only up to a point and Salleh had stretched that point almost to breaking point.

Salleh’s religion permitted four wives, but only on the strict condition that the other wives were ok with the deal and that he could support them. As Salleh’s wife had only been informed about his second marriage after the event he was stretching his religious convictions to their elastic breaking point, and he knew that, which is why he tended to keep his head down and tried to get on with life with two wives.

Salleh’s two wives lived separately. Salleh and wife number one live together with their animals etc in the kampung, while wife number two lived in the local town, and this was very convenient for Salleh as he didn’t have to deal with the two ladies together, at any one time.

Wife number one was a not unintelligent woman, and indeed neither was wife number two so it’s not too much of a stretch of the imagination to picture them meeting up one day, accidently of course. And then a second time, and a third and pretty soon they embarked on their second relationship beyond being Salleh’s trophies. Their initial reciprocal enmity dissipated and after a while the two ladies realised that they had more in common with each other than they had with their mutual husband, and for Salleh this became a very dangerous situation.

Slowly the women began to gang-up on Salleh and make all the major decisions. His evenings watching football turned into evenings washing up, his nights out with his chums disappeared to be replaced with house-sitting while the women went out. Every measure was taken to ensure that two wives stayed at being two wives and not three, or four, and in this Salleh was to learn a very important lesson about looking before leaping into anything, be it holes, or marriages.

A Naked Kampung Boy

2008-06-08T07:45:00.002+08:00

The gentle evening’s rain barely dampened Abanglong’s stiffly gelled black hair but has begun to soak the shoulders of his genuine Manchester United T-shirt as he dashes from his Proton Satria into his ground floor apartment. Hurriedly he fumbles for his front door key, not to answer the persistently ringing telephone but to use the last few seconds of car headlights before his car security system resets itself shutting off the lights and arming the alarm system.

The telephone ceases to ring as Abanglong throws his weighty car keys on the rickety telephone table and glances through the captured messages on the answer machine, realising none to be important he begins to leave a trail of discarding clothing as he wanders towards the bathroom to shower.

The apartment is small by most standards, a simple hall, two bedrooms, one kitchen and one bathroom, minus bath. The smaller of the two bedrooms doubles as a storeroom which has all too quickly been filled to capacity, and overflowing, hence the old motorcycle helmet bearing a Yamaha decal, worn-out car shock absorbers, badly copied CD covers of Black-Eyed peas albums and numerous other objects which now grace the hall pretending to be ornaments.

The hall is a sheer delight in urban interior design when compared to Abanglong’s bedroom which contains a vaguely bed-shaped heap demonstrating that Abanglong is as carefree about his belongings as he is fastidious about his cleanliness. The room containing the bed takes shelter under an array of previously discarded clothing, some clean, some worn once and several that could have gone to the penthouse parties Abanglong attended, on their own.

Somewhere buried under the assortment of clothing, pirated DVDs, VCDs, copied CDs, MP3 discs, silver futsal boots and empty Dunhill cigarette packets is the sarong Abanglong is so desperately searching for now that he has showered. The only two items not lurking in the undergrowth of his room, like forgotten soldiers after a world war, are his prayer mat and the white cotton topi he always wears at prayer times. Despite his apparent chaos Abanglong always has his priorities right when it comes to prayer, home and family, these are the three immovable objects in the constant shifting sands which has been his life since he left the kampung.

For the past three years Abanglong has been sampling the doubtful delights of city life, playing with a PDA palmtop computer while working, trading this and that, driving an extremely noisy Proton Satria ensuing that the boom of the exhaust can be heard a good three minutes before his car actually appears and wears the best clothes he can afford to buy. Abanglong parties in penthouses, sings karaoke, dances to American hip hop, jungle, house, techno and is well loved by city guys and gals . After parties Abanglong goes home, cooks fried egg which he eats with remains of sambal his mother has made for him, or simply cooks rice and trickles black soya sauce over soft eggs.

Abanglong wears Lois jeans out, a Gajah Kursi (Elephant chair)sarong at home, plays Playstation games with friends but really loves fishing when returning to the kampung where he will sprawl, almost comatose at times, relaxing with inquisitive cats discovering if he had passed on yet. In the city Abanglong plays indoor football (futsal) with mates but often reminisces regarding games he played in the kampung, motorcycle crash-helmets for goal posts.

It s therefore a truism that you can take Abanglong out of the kampung but you cannot take the kampung out of Abanglong, for beneath the gel, the western clothes and the city nonchalance there stands a naked kampung boy.

After the Feast

2008-06-07T07:40:00.002+08:00

After the warm greeting hail-fellow-well-met handshaking welcomes and the hearty stomach filling consumption of luscious brown buffalo curry. After the congratulations have-a-nice-life-together/happy-marriage, gold chairs, red trimmed table covers, blue and white pavilions, nasi minyak, syrup bandung and hennaed hands the recently greened grass lays flat, trampled with well wishes, bon home, sandals and gathered family spirit.

After the farce of feasting and the tudung wearing women have left, the last cigarette extinguished, the last sigh released, the melamine plates gathered and the huge aluminium scraped pots collected for the grand cleansing, comes the indefectible silence and in that shouting silence the echo of warm comforting togetherness.

Rows of stacked, white, brown plastic moulded chairs stand in the cooling shade of rambutan trees awaiting the lorry for collection now sad in their momentarily lost of utility standing erect, discards, rejects now the feast has concluded.

Constructed wooden table tops, a million and one splinters huddled together in woodeness, lean heavily against a thickened painted wooden post, and each other for mutual support, their makeshift frames punctuated by tacks recently used to secure prim covers as they too are caught up in the waiting game. An old blackening parang lies casually across the leaning wooden tops, its only other company provided by a few strands of discarded green vegetable waste witness to its blunted blade.

A lonely Yamaha 70cc machine crowds the foreground, a scout for the heavy mob, lone rider vanguard for utility removal to come later hastening the forgetting process by which all will only remain in the fading colours painted in minds and stomachs of previous onlookers. The waiting scout points towards a lone marquee essentially white but marked now by countless drops from hurrying birds, squirrels, nude lizards and sap dripping almost unnoticed from overshadowing fruiting trees.

Imprisoned wooden chairs, their golden material seats dusty with minute particles of kampung life, sit hesitantly expectantly together, seat rubbing seat for comfort in the unknowing as they exist encaged, locked, incarcerated alongside yellow and red carpets, rattan sofas, golden framed mirror and sundry items too precious to be allowed the freedom to roam the compound.

A child’s blue plastic and rubberised Japanese slipper lays atop of a weather beaten dull white plastic cup adjacent to a thin stick revealing remnants of the splendour it had once displayed as the symbol of union and fertility dressed in pink and holding the symbolic ovum and its allegorical representation. The upturned slipper bears a history of service the ephemeral stick was refused in its brief Warhol moment, its flash of momentary glory in support of the allegory.

The punishingly harsh midday sun strikes the battered canopy of a battle hardened lorry from its sniper position between the durian trees, a brief cloud of diesel hastily puffing from a carbonised exhaust, a dropped tailboard ready for the evacuation - the final reminder that yesterday’s festivities are at a climax and that the remaining life beyond the pleasures of that day will always exist in the shadow of its splendour and camaraderie.

Pa's Protest

2008-06-06T06:04:00.001+08:00

It is Thursday, the sun, never reluctant to emerge, blankets the kampung in a hazy heat making the day seem even more like Sunday than it would normally.

Again the rural kampung is quiet, not sleeping but quiet as a cemetery is quiet, that is quiet with a distinctive edge to it. Something a little chill reflects the lie to the burning heat, as if remarking that heat will only burn the material whereas this chill is a chill to penetrate the very soul, and, incidentally is not to be messed with.

In a horror movie a dark something would drift from the graveyard, all mysterious and spooky, and go about its abhorrent business murdering and maiming, perhaps with blood dripping from strangely white fangs. Close ups might reveal equally bloodshot eyes staring maniacally and a hint of dry powder on the cheeks, the camera lens picking up generally more than the director wishes it would. But this chill was not the stuff of sloppily constructed films of fiction, not the fake blood so red I can tell its paints sort of thing, no not at all; this was eerie, cold, and clammy in a temperature exceeding 30 degrees Celsius. It was a chill of recognition.

When Makcik Dot approached Pa Yusop’s kedai kopi at ten minutes past ten she met with a small crowd variously crouching, sitting or lounging, one propped up against a small notice nobody had bothered to read, and all waiting for Pa Yusop to open his shop. Pakcik Nasri desperately wanted a teh tarik, Encik Baru needed tobacco and really wouldn’t mind somewhere to escape to whereas young Art just wanted to be there and maybe engage in gossip as he had no internet access to distract his young mind and couldn’t afford a hand-phone to play with.

The note, should anyone have cared to read, said that the shop would be closed today, Thursday, in protest against the government’s hike in fuel prices and hence a rise in price of just about everything else. Pa Yusop was making his own protest against the seemingly cavalier attitude of those whom some people, not him, had voted into power and trusted to care for them and protect them, not punish the people for daring to spend a third of the votes for the opposition.

Pa had seen these signs before and knew that this price hike was just the beginning of dire days to come and wanted to make his own stand against those who would oppress him, and had eventually decided to close the shop for one day in protest – something that had not happened in the 30 years of Pa operating the shop. This was the chill, the chill of recognition that matters had become so bad that Pa Yusop would close his shop for an entire day, relentless in his protest come what may.

The chill blew into the faces, minds, hearts and souls of the kampung people. Had it really become this bad, were we really experiencing these things, it seemed almost unbelievable and yet as proof positive there it was, Pa Yusop’s shop was closed for an entire day, locked, no passage into, sealed as was their fates this day. All the people could do was to return home and think, and this is exactly what Pa had wanted.